Is Tai Chi a Treatment for Back Pain - Health Channel

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Is Tai Chi a Treatment for Back Pain |

Alternative therapies such as Tai Chi (it’s one of the good ways to engage the core muscles) and massages (it’s a good source of relaxation) are good ways to treat back pain, says Dr. Ronald Tolchin, Medical Director of the Baptist Health Center for Spine Care.
However, he says he tells their patients those treatments are not a panacea, because they’re to be done in conjunction with strengthening exercises, physical fitness and right diet modifications.
The doctor adds treatments should be a combination of things: to change lifestyle and get more in tune with a healthy lifestyle, among others.

Transcript

I love that you said that you were so open to alternative methods like Tai Chi, massage, acupuncture, tell me a little bit about that and your relationship with the patient and using those those methods.> Well thanks for asking, I really like to get my patients involved physicallym right so some of the things we like to do is for example Tai Chi is a good way to engage the core musclesm and it’s a good focusing for the patientm tuning into their body and start strengthening the muscles the core muscles particularly, massage makes everyone feel good right, so massage relaxes the muscles and if you have tight muscles you have a lot of stress up in the upper shoulders, the upper back area, in the lower back area massage could be a great source of relaxation, for those, those muscles, so massage therapy I encourage my patients to do it I tell them though that it’s not a cure-all, it’s not a panacea, that it has to be done in conjunction with their own strengthening exercises and their own physical fitness, the right diet modifications and things like that so, each of these standing alone is not enough you have to put it together for them, so for example everyone feels better after a long stressful day to get a massage and if they have back pain it works very well, but then they should do their own stretching in combination with that.> You actually took that question right out of my mouth because I was going to ask do these by themselves can be used to treat back pain?, but your answer is not always.> Right and I tell patients that some of the things I’m gonna recommend are really not standalone, and people come to you they want to a cure, if they want to fix right, and I have to teach them in this part of patient education, to teach them that you know it’s not one thing alone, it’s not a pill that’s gonna fix you, it’s not a massage that’s going to fix you, but it’s going to be a combination of things, that are going to change your lifestyle and get you more in tune with a healthy lifestyle.

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