Back pain is a complicated beast, and it plagues more people than you might think. More than half of Americans complain of back pain at least yearly and other live with chronic back pain that doesn’t always improve with treatment. Experts also believe that more than 80 percent of the population will have back pain at some time in their lives.
Back pain is also one of the most common causes of lost workdays with more than 264 lost work days owing to back pain (about two workdays per full-time American worker). Even mild back pain can put you in a bad mood and make it difficult to restore your health and well being.
There are conventional treatments for back pain, including chiropractic care, ice, NSAIDs, physical therapy, etc. In severe cases, surgery may be required, although surgeries only have a 50 percent success rate, and that success rate decreases with each spinal surgery a person has.
That’s why many people are turning to CBD oil for back pain. This substance that comes from the hemp plant won’t make you high, but it will help to dull the pain you might feel on a daily basis. Many patients report improved symptoms after taking CBD, and it might be time for you to try CBD too.
The Cause of Back Pain
To understand the way CBD might help your back, it’s good to look at the major causes of back pain.
Your back is one of the most complex and essential structures in your body. It’s made up of muscles, joints, ligaments, tendons, and bones that all work with the spinal cord. Your spinal cord connects to the brain and is responsible for controlling your ligaments. Nerves run up and down your spine, transmitting signals and receiving them to return to the brain. When your back is injured, these transmissions are not always sent or received.
Your back pain could be the result of an injury. You can sprain muscles, ligaments, and tendons. You could irritate or rupture disks between your spinal joints as well. These injuries need time to heal, and sometimes they won’t fully heal, leading to chronic pain.
Back pain can also be the result of an underlying health condition. Back pain can result from kidney infections, diabetes complications, bone loss, blood clots, kidney stones, and even cancer.
For most people, their back stiffness and pain is more a result of their lifestyle. They might hunch at their desks staring at a computer screen, fail to get physical activity, or slouch when they walk. This leads to improper curvatures and weaknesses in the spine that cause sore muscles, tendons, and joints. It can also cause nerve pain to course up and down the spine, causing severe pain and/or inflammation.
There are several tools for preventing back pain, including:
- Eating healthy and maintaining a healthy weight
- Exercising and remaining active throughout the day
- Warming up before exercise
- Wearing comfortable shoes
- Investing in ergonomic furniture at work
- Quitting smoking and other bad habits
- Sleeping on a mattress, usually one that’s medium firm to firm
- Maintaining proper posture
Each of these excellent tactics for spinal health can be enhanced or aided with the use of CBD oil.
How CBD Interacts with Pain Signals in the Body
Your spinal cord sends and transmits signals throughout the body, including signals of hormone production, immune responses, and other essential functions that run through your body’s endocannabinoid system. This structure is made up of naturally occurring cannabinoids and endocannabinoids and is largely believed to help control pain centers in your body.
When you take CBD, you’re increasing the number of cannabinoids that enter your body, helping to regulate a system that’s been thrown off balance with pain signals. It can help to inhibit some of these pain signals, numbing or reducing pain in the back and other areas of the body.
CBD can be taken internally to course through the blood stream and tackle pain signals in this way. It can also be rubbed into the areas of the back that are experiencing the most pain, absorbing into your skin’s endocannabinoid receptors and minimizing pain at the site.
Countless individuals have used CBD to conquer their back-related aches and pains, and you can too.
Other Ways CBD Oil Could Help Relieve Your Back Pain
Along with targeting the pain itself, the best CBD oil could relieve other symptoms that might contribute directly or indirectly to your back pain. Here are a few ways CBD might be able to help.
Reduce Inflammation: Inflammation is a natural protective response to an injury or strain, but it also gets in the way of healing. For your chiropractor, medications, and other practices to work, bringing down the inflammation is essential. CBD is a natural anti-inflammatory that can do some of this work.
Relieve Anxiety: For many people, anxiety keeps them from accomplishing their full potential. They might fail to exercise properly because their social anxiety keeps them out of the gym. It could also lead to overeating, bad posture, hunching over a computer, and other bad habits that serve to worsen back pain. Anxiety can also induce stress, which can naturally pull at the muscles of your neck and back and cause pain. CBD is an excellent reliever of anxiety. If you believe you’re not taking care of your health because of the way anxiety inhibits you, CBD might relax you enough that you can.
Help Symptoms of Serious Health Problems: As mentioned previously, back pain can be a symptom of more serious underlying health conditions. CBD has shown promise in some studies for relieving symptoms associated with high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, and more. If your pain is coming from an underlying source, CBD might be able to help.
Improve Sleep: Sleep is vital to healing any source of pain or injury throughout the body, but when you have back pain, it’s hard to get enough sleep. CBD can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep throughout the night, partially by relieving your pain and partially because it seems to create a subtle drowsy feeling that allows you to drift off peacefully when you’re ready.
Other than a few very mild side effects in a few patients (dry mouth, light headedness, nausea), CBD has not shown any adverse conditions for human users. Therefore, it’s worth a shot to try to take back your back health and improve your life!
