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.
Hot water bottle, cherry stone cushion or a warm bath, 20 to 30 minutes, several times a day — and move afterwards, do not stay lying down.
Warmth increases blood flow, lowers muscle tone and dampens pain transmission. For acute low back pain the benefit is actually described.
Warmth alone does not release tension lastingly — it makes moving bearable, and the moving is the real treatment.
Not on fresh injuries, inflamed or hot joints. Not while asleep and not with reduced sensation — burns then happen unnoticed.
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.