What is the best supplement to take for back pain?
Thank goodness we can finally stop saying “Happy New Year!” at the 16th of January.
Hope you all have had a good start to the new year and your resolutions are still in place.
We get a lot of questions from clients wanting nutrition advice and before we get in to the blog we have to put a disclaimer that Chiropractors are not experts in nutrition.
If you are seeking proper advice for nutrition, then it’s best to go to a qualified nutritionist. But we can offer some guidance for supplements or eating proper food.
So we tend to get these questions a lot at the start of the year because of January being a time where our clients are starting to take initiative and be more proactive with their health.
As a rule, we believe that natural supplementation through proper diet is the best way to fuel your body, whether that be eating moderate portions of carbohydrate, high amounts vegetables and moderate protein, fuelling your body appropriately and eating moderate amounts.
If you want to get into supplements, then these are a few we would recommend. But I would only start supplementing your body if you are struggling with adequate nutrition from proper food.
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- Zinc is a fantastic supplement and some of the properties are that it helps muscle stiffness and achiness and can be very useful for people suffering with back pain and neck pain. It comes in several forms. It is the second most abundant mineral in your body and can aid in metabolism, digestion, and nerve function. You can take it as a tablet. We use magnesium and zinc spray in the clinic which you can spray onto the surface. It can be absorbed directly through the subcutaneous tissue. This is very helpful as it’s directly absorbed into the muscle area.
- Magnesium-A fantastic mineral that is in short supply often in the body. A natural form of magnesium would be found in almonds, cashew nuts and raw spinach. Magnesium has very similar properties to zinc and is involved in many enzymatic reactions in the body. It has also been shown to help with sleeping.
- Omegas are amazing natural anti-inflammatories and naturally they’re found in lots of nuts, seeds, legumes or oliy fish. But a lot of people decide to take them as supplements purely because they don’t like eating fish or because it’s very difficult to get the quantities that you need to provide an anti-inflammatory effect in the body Lots of links to heart health, eye health as well and for stimulating brain development from a young age.
- Calcium is what we get asked about a lot. If we drink more milk, will we get stronger bones? Not always and this is not always the case. So calcium in its rawest form comes in much of the leafy green vegetables such as kale, spinach, broccoli. Eating this raw is the best way to get calcium in your body. But if not, steam them and then lastly boil them. When you boil, you lose a lot of the nutrition. But supplements, calcium is in a tablet form and should always be taken with vitamin D.
- Vitamin D. A lot has been written about vitamin D in the past, especially for the UK, because we live in very little sunlight. It’s good to supplement with vitamin D. It acts as an absorber for calcium to get into the body and this helps with bone development and especially for post-menopausal women, it’s a very important supplement to have.
So if you have any questions about what supplements to take, why you should be taking them? Please ask us and we can try to help. We can point you in the right direction. But anything more significant, we may have to refer you onto a nutritionist and that’s where we would always ask you to seek professional advice.
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