How Water Therapy Can Soothe Your Back Pain

How Water Therapy Can Soothe Your Back Pain | Arthritis Information

More from the Johns Hopkins Health Alerts :

The health benefits of water therapy have been acknowledged throughout history to help treat various ailments, including muscle pain. Today, we also use water therapy to manage various musculoskeletal conditions, including low back pain.

We all know that water benefits us from the "inside out" -- hence the oft cited advice to drink eight glasses of water each day. Water also provides numerous benefits from the "outside in." For instance, working out in water can increase your cardiovascular fitness, improve your flexibility, and help you relax. If you have back problems, aquatic exercise can also help to:

Stabilize your lower back. Water naturally resists when you move. Exercising against this resistance, with the right pushing or pulling motions, gently develops muscle strength in your back, abdomen, and hips. When you target these core muscles, you help stabilize your posture and support your lower back. The deeper you immerse your body, the greater the resistance and the more challenging the water workout will be.
Minimize pressure on your spine, joints, and muscles. Because water is buoyant, it supports your weight, thereby minimizing the pressure placed on your spine, joints, and muscles. This results in a number of benefits. First, the reduced stress can help alleviate pain and decrease the chances of further aggravating your back. Second, you can move through the water with relative ease, which enables you to stretch your back muscles and improve your range of motion. Third, you're able to perform movements in water that may be too difficult or painful to carry out on a hard surface during land-based exercises.
Soothe and relax your muscles. Even without exercising, being in warm water—as is generally recommended for people recovering from a back injury— can relieve pain, reduce swelling, and relax your back muscles. In addition, the soothing, warm water environment may motivate you to exercise more consistently and, in turn, enable you to achieve better results from your exercise routine.

Is the bursitis from RA? I had bursitis (for the first time ever) in my right hip back in July. It was very painful and I could barely walk. I had my son drive me to the ER because I thought, "I must have broken something" as painful as it was. The x-ray showed nothing. They gave me an injection in the rear end for the pain but, it didn't even touch the pain. They may as well have given me an injection of water. The ER doc blew it off as something to do with RA as soon as he heard I took plaquenil even though I told him I am currently undiagnosed. I explained what happened to one of the docs I work for and he immediately told me that the bursa sac broke (that was the pop I heard) and the burning was from the fluid in the bursa sac being released into the body. He said there was nothing I could do for it, it would heal on its own. He said if the pain didn't get better I would need therapy. Well, it ended up getting better but, occasionally I will have a little pain in my hip when I walk; nothing serious though. I'm just curious, did you have any problems with this before you were diagnosed with RA? Has your rheumy told you that bursitis is connected with RA? I haven't seen my rheumy since this happened and I'm curious to know what he will tell me when I see him in Nov. I would just like to have a little knowledge about it when I tell him about it.

Thanks,

Jen