Home remedies · Back, muscles & joints
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Lie on your back, lower legs on a chair or box, knees and hips each at about a right angle. Ten to twenty minutes, several times a day — not longer.
This position takes the pull off the lower back muscles and relieves the discs for a moment. Many find getting up easier afterwards.
It heals nothing and does not replace movement — lying down for days tends to make back pain worse, not better.
Not with numbness in the saddle area, disturbed bladder function, weakness or fever — that needs assessing at once.
Have it assessed rather than treated at home: back pain with numbness in the saddle area, disturbed bladder or bowel function, weakness or fever. A joint that cannot bear weight after an injury, or is deformed. A one-sided swollen, warm leg.