Natural Alternatives to Aspirin
Aspirin is a very common pain reliever used by hundreds of thousands of people every day to help easy common aches and pains. The drug even offers preventive assistance for ailments like blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks. Pains can range from fever, headaches, bruises, inflammation and the like. In short Aspirin is often used as the go to pain reliever. In extreme cases Aspirin is useful for preventing colon cancer. Like all medications while Aspirin has plenty of help benefits there is always a set of cons to go with the pros, not only that but it’s a common act of laziness to take a fast acting pill that takes seconds to swallow and get the job done. Just like paying a cheap plumber who isn’t sure exactly how your plumbing works, might not always get the job done right, taking Aspirin can cause side effects, or simply just not work well with your “plumbing”. Examples of said side effects consist of ulcers, ringing ears, Reye syndrome. Reye syndrome may be one of the most damaging potential side effects which targets young children and causes brain and liver damage as well as possible death. So in order to avoid any nasty side effects or just go completely natural there are loads of different alternative options that you may incorporate into your daily lifestyle in order to suit and pain relief needs.
Diet
We’ve all heard of the terrible things caffeine can do to you, but did you know that it can stress out your adrenal glands, which are located right in your lower back? Just a small pick-me-up stimulates the glands, giving you that sweet, victorious feeling of energy. While this may feel great, and be very helpful it will rapidly tear you down the path of weekend or inflamed adrenals (the things in your lower back). As you may have guessed, when these adrenals get upset, your poor lower back has to pay the price.
Stay away from the processed foods; they work terribly for your body. Coronary heart disease, diabetes, strokes, cancer can all be traced back to industrial food that is made with way too much oil, sugar, salt, and corn or soy ingredient with empty calories with no nutrition, and that may even cause worse inflammation to your back. The best way to avoid these foods are by cooking every night (sometimes that is not possible, but the goal to cook every night will keep you cooking on most nights, which will most likely be enough). Being able to know and say all of the ingredients you are cooking with will probably be the best thing you ever do while aiming to cook healthy. A good meal for your body (mostly back) would be a meal made up of a cold water fish, such as salmon, sardines, black cod, tuna, or mackerel combined with a mostly plant based diet such as flax and chia seeds. Olive oil, green tea, and brightly colored fruits and vegetables have been proved to reduce inflammation.
Lifestyle
Commonly while sitting on our computer we keep our lower back flexed, in other words, we hunch our backs. We may be sitting at our computer or T.V. for hours on end simply because we are bored or we have work or homework to do and we become distracted, so that lesson our first typing teacher taught us is forgotten. “Backs straight, shoulders back, both hands on, eyes front, no pecking” I still remember Mr. H saying in my middle school typing class, repeated with such importance, to be thrown to the wind as soon as I hit ninety words a minute.
Simply remembering to lift your chest up and roll your shoulders back may help ease some discomfort. It won’t be comfortable at first; you will experience perhaps exhaustion from holding yourself up for so long, or if you are anything like me, maybe even a difference in breathing patterns and light headedness. However, in the long run you will be grateful you changed the way you sat. We also may find ourselves doing this while driving.
Being overly stressed will cause tightening of muscles, staying stressed will make it so the muscles don’t release. Just taking some time out of your day to exercise, laugh, read an interesting book, listen to music, or do yoga will help release those muscles so that they don’t form painful knots.
The shoes you wear may be affecting your back pain. High heels make your legs look great, and your calves pop, and your knees disappear, but it also leads to foot instability. So do flat footed shoes, such as flip flops or anything without a built in arch. If you know you will be walking a long way or standing a lot in the day, simply convert to a cute sneaker. You don’t have to forgo your heels forever, just over long distances.
And of course the simple things like an old mattress, ignoring the pain (pretending it doesn’t bother you, makes it so you don’t take care of it), too big of a backpack or purse, sitting at a desk for too long, not doing yoga or exercising etc.
