If you have recently undergone back surgery on your neck or lower back yet have failed to feel relief from pain, you may be suffering from an underlying problem. The problem with this is that many treatments fail to respond to these underlying problems.
Scar tissue is a post-surgical reality, even with the least invasive forms of surgery that serve to minimize scar tissue. Your recent surgery will leave you with a certain amount of scar tissue, but how you deal with that scar tissue and the resulting pain is what matters. Before you know how to deal with scar tissue after surgery, it is important to know what contributes to post-surgical pain.
Post-operative back pain is often caused by scar tissue, but also fibrous adhesions, which if left untreated could take months or even years before they fully go away. These adhesions are really just additional scar tissue, but they have been known to occur inside the cells in the body rather than just on the body.
Usually scar tissue goes away as the healing process progresses, but in some instances that scar tissue will compress nerves in the spine. This is called epidural fibrosis and can cause agonizing pain even after surgery.
In fact it is quite common for scar tissue to exacerbate the symptoms that the back surgery was intended to treat or eliminate altogether. This is why surgeons typically provide patients with a long list of post-surgical treatments they need to carefully follow to ensure that healing takes place correctly. Failure to adhere to these instructions can cause post-operative pain, but often there is little the patient can do about scar tissue, fibrous adhesions or epidural fibrosis.
To heal properly scar tissue may require what is known as a “myofascial release,’ which is a type of soft tissue therapy use to treat pain and limited mobility. There are several techniques that have been proven effective forms of soft tissue therapy, including massage therapy. Unfortunately if you were in search of an easy treatment that would lead to a quick resolution, you won’t find it here. In addition to myofascial release, pain relief from post-surgical scar tissue also requires the absorption of the excess scar tissue on a cellular level.
What You Can Do At Home
Since pain relief from post-surgical scar tissue cannot be treated with exercises and stretches, many patients wonder if this is just a pain they must endure until the tissue heals on its own or medicine sees greater advancements. The good news is that there most certainly are things you can do–simple things–that will prevent the development of scar tissue after back surgery.
Diet in particular plays a large role in the development of post-operative scar tissues, especially as we age. Fruits and vegetables are a vital part of just about every healthy diet in existence, yet most adults consistently consume far less fresh produce than is recommended for optimal health. Without the enzymes present in fruits and vegetables, our bodies will produce even fewer of the enzymes responsible for minimizing the development of post-surgical scar tissue.
One of the reasons for this confusion is an inconsistent recommendation among nutritionists and dieticians about how much is enough produce each day. In the weeks before and after surgery you should be consuming a minimum of 5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily. One serving of fruit or vegetables is 1 cup of fresh produce, which means you should be eating 5 to 7 cups in order to avoid scar tissue build up and reduce pain associated with scar tissue.
Some patients who do not get enough fruit and vegetables in their diet may also rely on enzyme supplements, which you can learn more about here.
