Immediate Back Pain Relief

People very often react one of two ways to sudden back pain; they either try to ignore it, hoping it will just go away, or they reach for their favourite painkillers. Though drugs may provide an almost immediate alleviation of pain, it must be recognised that dosing up is not actually going to fix anything. As long as you see them only as a short term aid to inhibit pain, relax the muscles and reduce inflammation, then they can be very useful - especially if they help you get a bit of sleep. The fixing, however, will be the result of a series of longer term changes you'll need to set in place.

If you're facing pain right now there are a number of things you can do immediately to bring some relief.

1. Pain killers

This course of action can be valuable in the short term. Pain can be completely immobilising and the removal of at least the worst of the pain can enable the patient to simply get around a bit more. Movement itself is crucial if we're to seeking to recover.

Doctors, of course, are primarily trained to prescribe the most appropriate drugs to treat specific conditions. So a doctor may recommend certain pain killers for symptoms of acute back pain.

Some of the main Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug brands (NDSAIDS) include: Motrin®, Naprosyn®, Celebrex®, Relafen®, Dolobid®, Diflunisal®, Indocin®, Voltaren® and Ibuprofen®. Paracetamol (acetaminophen) can also act as a simple 'pain-blocker' and can usually be taken alongside NSAIDs.

Be aware NSAIDs can be a bit harsh on the stomach, so can be taken with milky drink that will help line the stomach wall. If you've ever had stomach ulcers or any kind of gastrointestinal bleeding in the past, make sure you check things first with your GP.

For a more natural approach that avoids the risk of stomach upset or other side effects, you may want to try the herb Boswellia. Boswellia (frankincense) has been used for centuries in the East as an anti-inflammatory and is reported to be able to provide the same type of pain relief as over the counter NSAIDs.

2. Muscle relaxants

Another class of drug that can help are the muscle relaxants. When the safety of the spinal cord is in jeopardy, the muscles will often go into spasm; 'clamping' vertebrae together in order to protect it. Acute pains will usually occur when this action squeezes a nerve.

Muscle relaxants do the job of simply causing the muscles to loosen and relieve the pressure from the trapped nerve. Some of the main brands include: SOMA® (Carisoprodol), Flexeril®, Robaxin®, Valium® and Diazepam®.

Like pain-killers, these drugs must not be viewed as a long term option. Be aware, also, that your unconscious mind 'told' these muscles to spasm for a good reason and you must seek to discover the underlying cause to ensure you do not compromise your back health in the same way again.

3. Ice

Inflamed areas can be effectively cooled with ice to provide some temporary relief. You'll ideally use an ice pack that is flexible enough to curve around the area involved. Whilst there are specialist products on the market for this purpose, one I've used was really for keeping food cold and comprised of multiple 'pockets' of blue liquid that made it easy to shape as required. When I needed this regularly, I kept several ready in the freezer so it would be easy to apply 2 or 3 times a day.

4. Heat

First it is important to recognise that you should not use heat when there's any residual inflammation - as it will only make it worse. Heat can be used once the inflammation has subsided, usually after the first 2-3 days, but not before. There are various products on the market that can provide localised heat. The intention of these is to help the muscles relax. So if you have spasming muscles that are not actually inflamed, by all means try gently warming the area with a professional product (heat wraps, infrared pads, etc) or do it yourself by soaking in a warm bath or using a hot water bottle if that's easier to get hold of.

I've also heard that it can be beneficial to alternate heat and ice about every hour.

5. TENS Unit

I've not used one of these myself, though I've had experience of attaching one to my wife on numerous occasion in the final weeks of her pregnancies. It uses a variable electric current is designed to interrupt the pain-signals before they reach the brain. It does work, at least in part but isn't any good for very serious pain.

6. Inversion aids

Inversion aids take your entire body weight as you lie on your back and tilt your body so that your feet are raised - to varying degrees - above your head. This reverses the usual compression effect of gravity and can be a great help.

This is not something you can usually reach for the first time pain hits, of course, but can be useful as on ongoing therapy aid and, if you're mobile enough to get yourself into position, may provide you with some immediate relief. It's best not to try this soon after eating; you need to let gravity work as designed with your digestive system whilst it's in full swing!

If you're interested in this, do check the safety issues before committing to buy as there are certain health conditions that this exercise of inverting your body this way will actually make worse.

Finally, another way of reducing spinal compression is simply finding ways of minimising the loads you carry each day - your back has to manage any weights you pick up in your hands or attach to your back, of course.

The G20 Summit and Huxley's Dystopian Pharmopsychological Remedy For the Coming Summer of Rage

The summit, which is largely seen already as dysfunctional, is a setting where nearly all of Mayfair's hotel's street-level windows and doors have been covered in protective blue panels for fear that the many protests planned for this week's summit could turn violent. In addition to that, the security operation was thrown into chaos when it emerged that the entire network of central London's wireless CCTV cameras will have to be turned off because of a legal ruling.

Gordon Brown, who championed the summit as his self-survival package, now looks around him at the chaos, even before ministers of the world's most wealthy countries get a chance to meet. It has been reported that President Sarkozy has threatened to wreck the London summit if France's demands for tougher financial regulation are not met.

The regulatory changes he alludes to are those that are needed to make the financial system function. How to reform international organisations, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are also on the agenda and are likely to fail.

No, Flash Gordon will not be able to rise to the occasion as Master of the Universe and may well be lucky to come out of it unscathed; more likely he will be brutally battered and all alone in Bretton Woods with a picnic basket given the debt he has recently amassed for future generations to repay.

As far as China is concerned, Wu Xiaoling, a former vice-governor of its central bank, said recently: "It's impossible for any concrete agreements to be reached at the G20. We shouldn't pin much hope on it." She argued its real purpose was symbolic: showing that global leaders were acting together to tackle the crisis.

The stars of the show, the nascent "golden couple", are reportedly paranoid enough to bring more than 100 Secret Service bodyguards, three armoured helicopters, a dozen armour-plated cars and people-carriers; and within minutes of them landing at Stansted, the Obamas were said to be flown by either a Blackhawk or Sea King helicopter into Central London where SAS troops, who have a secret base nearby, are expected to work with US Secret Service agents to ensure a "ring of steel" round the Obamas.

Meanwhile, organisers have said on social networking sites that they plan to "reclaim the City". Only last week 35,000 people descended on the capital from all over the country, with an anarchist group breaking into a disused pub on the fringes of the City to set up a nerve centre to co-ordinate the G20 protests. And an organisation called the "Convergence Crew" has declared that they were "almost ready for the Summer of Rage".

The Thanatos Syndrome spoke of how whole truth should prevail and that it is a disaster when only one kind of truth prevails at the expense of another. If only one kind of truth prevails then nothing stands in the way of a demeaning of and a destruction of human life for what appears to be reasonable short-term goals. And what better one-sided truth than the financial market scams?

Indeed, this summit looks like being akin to classic Kafkaesque alienation for the world's long-suffering populace. The G20 is supposedly the meeting of political minds on the global financial crisis, one that has already seen France revert to its long-standing mistrust of free markets, globalisation, capitalism and "fat cat" bosses, with Nicolas Sarkozy adopting rhetoric that has seen him caricatured as Karl Marx. And this is just one example of the lack of consensus, with its stark pre-meeting revelations that the French do not want more stimulus packages, but a more "moral" capitalism.

In this, the French have perhaps led the way ahead of the Summer of Rage, where the financial crisis has seen record public support for strikes and street demonstrations, a rise in extreme protests such as taking bosses hostage, and a surge of support for the extreme left.

But to solve these tensions, maybe we should give a wry nod to Kierkegaard's existentialist tomfoolery, political satire, literary homage, word mongering, Dylanesque music bits, apocalyptic marianism and poetry. Or even, disingenuously, by invoking the calming effects of Huxley's dystopian pharmopsychological remedy?

Huxley, on the one hand, knew his dystopian satire alright when he wrote A Clockwork Orange, widely considered to be his magnum opus, but he also implied the opposite with the benefits of the Soma pill in "A Brave New World", a ritual drink of importance taken by the early Indo-Iranians, which served in the book as a false symbol for any regime of universal happiness.

So how did Huxley turn a future, where we're all notionally happy, into the archetypal dystopia? If it's technically feasible, what's wrong with using biotechnology to get rid of mental pain altogether? In truth, Huxley's visionary world was neither "brave" nor "new", only contrived to exploit the anxieties of a bourgeois audience about Soviet Communism and Fordist American capitalism, which looks like what is on the agenda at the G20 summit, that is if France has anything to do with it.

Aptly, Huxley tapped into, and then fed, our revulsion at our Pavlovian-style behavioural conditioning and eugenics and, by extension, the vagaries of free market economy to be discussed this week, in which "happiness" is derived from consuming mass-produced goods and, most famously of all, a supposedly perfect pleasure-drug, soma.

But as perfect pleasure-drugs go, soma underwhelms. It is not really a utopian wonderdrug at all; it is more akin to a hangoverless tranquilliser or an opiate - or a psychic anaesthetising SSRI like Prozac - than a truly life-transforming elixir. Instead, soma provides a mindless, inauthentic "imbecile happiness" - a vacuous escapism which makes people comfortable with their lack of freedom.