The Potential Benefit Of Omega 3 Fatty Acids In Helping To Relieve Back Pain

This blog has been created mainly to introduce Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction as a superb means of coping with chronic pain of all kinds--with an emphasis on low back pain.

Additionally, however, it will feature other natural means of relieving pain.

One of these is including an adequate amount of omega 3 fatty acids in your diet.

The following article on WebMd focuses on evidence of the benefits of this natural supplement for people with neck and back pain.

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Fish Oil May Help Ease Back Pain
Study Shows Omega-3 Fatty Acids May Be Safe Alternative for Pain Relief
By Miranda Hitti WebMD Medical News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

April 6, 2006 -- Fish oil supplements containing omega-3 essential fatty acids (EFAs) might help treat neck and back pain, a new study shows.
Such supplements might be "a safer alternative" to nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) for some patients with spine-related pain, write Joseph Maroon, MD, and Jeffrey Bost, PAC.
Maroon and Bost work in the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's neurological surgery department. Their study appears in Surgical Neurology.

The study doesn't prove that fish oil pills work as well as NSAIDs for back pain, note Maroon and Bost. They call their study a "starting point" for research on omega-3 fatty acids and other nonpharmaceutical treatment alternatives for spine-related pain.

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You can read the entire article here.

Also, see this article on Neptune Krill Oil and this comprehensive overview of omega 3 fatty acids.