I want to take a look at some conservative options I know you briefly mentioned them but I want to go over them because first on every list is always rest correct so rest is good excessive rest is not good what we don’t want people to do is decondition themselves so certainly if there’s an activity that hurts you you shouldn’t do it okay that’s not an excuse to lay in bed every day to lay in bed every day because the more deconditioned that your core musculature your back musculature gets the worse your pain is going to get so we actually do encourage people to use braces muscle relaxers and things like this but within reason for pain relief it’s not meant to be an everyday crutch okay over-the-counter pain relievers are a good idea so making sure that you’re not popping an entire bottle of aspirin or Tylenol day there are safe limits to the pain relievers that we can take over-the-counter and it’ll be told to you on bottle or speak to your family medicine doctor muscle relaxers are good I do prescribe them regularly and oftentimes they can yield a lot of pain relief because some of it could be related to the spasm in your back cold compresses or ice or heat sort of whatever people choose to use is fine I’m really not gonna hurt yourself either way there’s always a debate as you would you use cold compresses or heat it’s really whatever people feel is better for their back I mean honestly there’s sometimes heat is better if it’s muscle spasm cold is better if you feel it’s an inflammatory pain but try both and see what works for you just don’t put it directly on your skin because that can cause burns okay so that’s really the only thing there and physical therapy so you should not try physical therapy program by yourself you should see her family doctor or a spine surgeon or a physical medicine practitioner who can actually guide you with what you should be doing because you can actually make yourself worse if you do an incorrect program you