Many people who experience neck or back pain resulting from degenerative spine conditions have had success with alternative treatments. Regardless of whether your symptoms are mild and intermittent or severe and chronic, you simply may not be ready to consider a surgical procedure. For this reason, holistic treatments offer an alternative way to explore additional conservative treatments.

What is holistic medicine?

Degenerative spine conditions, like herniated discs, bulging discs, bone spurs and sciatic nerve compression, are never easy to deal with. However, holistic medicine is a route for pain relief that has grown in popularity over the last several decades. Holistic medicine is defined as medicine that aims to treat the entire patient rather than just a condition or symptoms. By improving the body’s overall health, many patients have also found improvement in the state of their spine. Holistic treatments can include any of the following:

• Biofeedback. A form of therapy that changes the way your brain interprets and responds to pain signals. Electrodes are used to find patterns in your body’s physical responses to stimuli. Once the relationship between psychological and physiological responses has been established, the patient can change his or her behavior and manage pain more successfully.
• Yoga. A practice of stretching and meditative breathing that can be adapted to suit a variety of spinal ailments. After receiving clearance from your physician, you can choose the yogic discipline that best suits your needs, like relaxation, restoration, strength building, detoxification and flexibility.
• Chiropractic work. Focuses on the health of the musculoskeletal system, particularly in the spine. Practitioners believe that a properly aligned spinal column is the basis for overall health.
• Herbal medicine. The use of plant extracts to treat disease and other physical ailments. The extracts can take the form of tisanes, tinctures or aromatherapy. Popular herbs for relief of back pain include chamomile, yarrow juice, burdock and St. John’s Wort.

What if conservative or alternative treatments are not effective?

While a large number of patients who are diagnosed with degenerative spine conditions will likely be able to find pain relief from alternative holistic treatments or conventional conservative treatments like exercise, pain medication and hot-cold therapy, some people may need surgery. If you fall into this category, contact USA Spine Care.

We provide a free MRI review* to determine if you could be a candidate for one of our minimally invasive outpatient procedures.

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