July 24, 2019

A Simple, Natural Way to Manage Back Pain. {Partner}

This article is written with Kaia—they’re dedicated to making natural back pain management accessible to all and we’re honored to work with them. ~ ed.

I couldn’t get out of bed.

My pelvis and lower back were frozen solid. It hurt to even move—and I was young, fit, and healthy! 

In hindsight, I realized the warning signs had been building up for a while; I’d just been ignoring them. All it took was a combination of stress, old injuries, early pregnancy hormones, and existing muscle weakness to flatten me completely.

Our spine and the intricate web of nerves and muscles that support it are literally the backbone of our ability to function as happy, healthy human beings. 

Approximately 80% of Americans will experience back pain at some point in their lives. Yet most of us just soldier on. Maybe we go to a yoga class, pop a few painkillers, and pay for the occasional massage or chiropractic treatment when it gets really bad. However, most of us don’t make the time to consciously manage our pain, or get the root of the issue.

“I work one day a week at a grocery store and this app has really helped me be able to stand for long periods of time without pain. This was terribly hard for me to do before!”

The thing about pain is it tends to snowball. Even a little back pain can have a big impact, eventually. Did you know that only about a third of chronic pain is physical? The rest is negative feedback loops in our body-mind. We hurt, we tense up, we get stressed and anxious, we tense up more, we hurt more.

Let it build up long enough and one day we find ourselves reliant on those painkillers, unable to even manage that yoga class, and listening to our doctor tell us surgery is the best way forward.

The alternative? Investing a small amount of time and effort, consistently and tackling the pain from a few different angles: looking at what we’re doing every day to make our pain better or worse, identifying where the tension or imbalance is starting, educating ourselves about what we can do differently, and reducing our mental and physical stress so we stop the feedback loop.

The problem is, most of us don’t really know where to start or what exactly to do, and the time and cost of getting multiple therapists and professionals to help us rules this out as an option for most of us. So, we go back to popping painkillers…

Unless we could get all the benefits of a holistic approach in one easy-to-use, accessible, affordable tool. 

Kaia is the wellness app on a mission to help us live a life with less pain.

Try Kaia free for 7 days >>

Kaia offers a multidisciplinary approach to pain management, with physical therapy exercises to strengthen and rebalance the body, education to empower us, and mindfulness, stress reduction, and mental training to support our recovery—from the comfort of our own homes.

The secret sauce? Artificial intelligence (plus expert guidance)!

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, Kaia’s Motion Coach is able to monitor our movements through our smartphone or tablet camera and provide real-time audio feedback on our alignment and posture, offering tips to help us improve. 

The app also gives us chat access to Kaia’s health coaches, physical therapists, and sports scientists who can support with our personal health, tailoring a program to us, our condition, and where we’re feeling the pain—helping us manage it all in as little as 15 minutes a day.

“It was helpful to set specific goals—may not have done that on my own. It will help with motivation and, I’m hoping, with results. It’s nice to have a mentor who can answer your questions and explain the program, especially since I am just starting. Liked that she asked relevant questions about my health and motivation and then listened to what I had to say.”

Doctors appointments, referrals, treatments, and even surgeries can add up quickly—a fact that is compounded by the state of our healthcare system in America. 

A single subscription fee to Kaia gives you access to a holistic, multidisciplinary programme developed by sports medicine doctors, psychologists, and physiotherapists in tandem with German medical institutions. 

A natural, low-risk method.

Try Kaia free for 7 days >>

Most doctors will suggest painkillers and surgery as treatment options for back pain. Many also do suggest physical therapy or chiropractic. While there’s a place for both, they’re too often presented to us as first-choice options when they should really be a last resort. The current medical model trains us to look for band-aids instead of solutions to the source of the problem, and it can end up costing us the very thing we’re trying to preserve: our health.

Painkillers come with a high risk of addiction, and surgery is an invasive, life-altering, and usually avoidable option. An app like Kaia offers us a natural, physical therapy-driven approach that may not today be brought up in our doctor’s offices, but provides real relief without reliance on medications or costly and painful operations.

Traditional physical therapy options are still a great option, but here’s the problem with those: seeing a physical therapist in person could cost between $60-$150 per session, then there’s the potential wait for an appointment, having to commute there, wait in the waiting room, commute back and get only 2-3 exercises for a long period of time.

With Kaia, the benefits of physical therapy are there for us wherever and whenever we need them.

“We get into a pattern of constantly feeling like the world is against us. It’s so nice to learn that we can take back control of our pain. I feel so empowered! It’s so much more than physical well being.”

Chronic pain isn’t just physical.

Remember that statistic? Only about a third of chronic pain is actually physical. Not only does Kaia revolutionize the way we manage our pain by removing barriers that get in the way of us accessing the right care, it also supports us mentally as we tackle something that can seem insurmountable, incorporating the benefits of meditation, mindfulness, and therapeutic guidance, stopping that negative feedback loop in its tracks.

In a simple, personalized, and affordable way, Kaia puts our health and happiness back in our own hands.

Try Kaia free for 7 days >>

 

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Editor: Khara-Jade Warren