What to do to ease the severe back pain?

Why does coffee ease my back pain?

• A couple weeks ago I experience a nasty muscle cramp in my back. Sometimes I take Advil, but mostly I just deal with the pain knowing it will eventually heal. However, as an avid coffee drinker, I noticed the lower back pain eases up in the morning and particularly after I have my afternoon coffee drink. What is in coffee that would either relax my back or mask the pain?

• Answer:

  I'll take a stab at this one. The fact that coffee alleviates your back pain could actually help us to diagnose you. Coffee activates the sympathetic nervous system.  As such drinking coffee has two main effects that concern us now. 1.  Coffee would cause your skeletal muscles to contract in a typical 'fight or flight reaction'.  Therefore, if your back pain were due to tight muscles coffee should, in theory, make your back pain worse. 2.  Coffee is also a vasoconstrictor.  Vasoconstriction is a wonderful cure for inflammation.  Coffee causes arteries to get smaller, meaning less inflammatory chemicals can get to the site of inflammation.  Ice has a similar effect, as do some types of NSAIDs.  You say that you have a muscle cramp.  Theoretically, coffee should make a 'cramp' worse.  If, on the other hand, you actually have a muscle sprain coffee might make that feel better as much of the associated pain would be due to inflammation.  Of course, this is all pretty theoretical.This answer is not a substitute for professional medical advic...