Blomerth Chiropractic - Dr. Ellen Blomerth - Chiropractor Peabody Ma

12/29/2025

Low Back Pain: An Ice Pack or the Hot Tub?

Many patients perform some self-care when they first hurt their lower back, hoping this will keep them out of a doctor's office. While home remedies can sometimes make the pain go away, sometimes they don't. It just depends on what you try. When the back is first hurt, it's often a sprain/strain type of injury with accompanying muscle spasm. When a nerve in the low back becomes pinched or irritated, the body will protect the delicate nerves by keeping you from moving and risking further nerve injury. The easiest way for the body to do this is to cause the back muscles to spasm in the injured area.

Muscle pain can be quite severe and heat can sometimes soothe the pain. For this reason, many patients take to the heating pad or to the hot tub to try and get some relief. This should be avoided in an acute injury because inflammation is present. With inflammation, there is increased heat and the additional heat you provide is like adding gasoline to a fire. The results are usually not good.

A better choice with an acute injury is to ice the area, but this also needs to be done with some caution. The simplest ice pack is ice cubes placed in a plastic bag. While effective, you can cause a frostbite injury if you leave the pack on for too long. When you first ice the area, you will go through several phases before some pain relief is achieved. At first, the pack will feel cold. The next phase is a burning sensation and the ice will almost feel hot. This is followed by an aching or throbbing sensation. Just before the area is numbed, a very sharp pain will be experienced followed by the relief you desire. It can take between five to ten minutes to go through all of the phases. Once numbness is achieved, the pack should be removed. You should most definitely not fall asleep while the pack is on.

If this simple procedure does not solve the problem, it's best to get your spine checked by a doctor of chiropractic.

12/18/2025

The sudden acceleration and deceleration of the head and neck during a whiplash injury commonly damages soft tissues such as muscles, tendons, and ligaments. However, among the most frequently injured structures are the facet joints. In fact, research suggests that approximately half of neck pain

12/05/2025

Years Lived with Disability (YLD) is a public health metric that estimates the number of years individuals live with a disease or health condition, adjusted for the severity of the disability. According to the 2021 Global Burden of Disease Study, headaches account for 5.2% of global YLDs, ranking

11/26/2025

Neck pain and headaches can be very disabling and can significantly alter a person’s normal pattern of living. Simple things like reading the newspaper, cooking, driving a car, and/or looking down when feeding a baby can become almost intolerable. Canceling plans for the da

11/26/2025

What Is It? Whiplash is an injury to the soft tissues in the neck including ligaments, joint capsules, muscles and their tendons, and intervertebral disks. It can also involve the nervous system tissues in more severe cases,  result in radiating arm pain. How

11/25/2025

Patients with headaches also commonly complain of neck pain. This relationship is the rule, not the exception; therefore, in order to achieve optimum results, treatment for headaches must include treatment of the neck. There are many anatomical reasons why neck problems result in headaches. Some

11/18/2025

Have you ever considered how important your hamstrings muscles are in relationship to your lower back? Most people do not think about those tight muscles on the back of the upper leg / thigh as having much to do with low back pain (LBP); however, it is one of the most important muscles groups to

11/18/2025

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“To the best of my ability, I agree to provide my patients convenient, affordable, and mainstream Chiropractic care. I will not use unnecessary long-term treatment plans and/or therapies.”
Blomerth Chiropractic. 215 Newbury St. Suite 102, Peabody, MA 01960
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Have you ever considered how important your hamstrings muscles are in relationship to your lower back? Most people do not think about those tight muscles on the back of the upper leg / thigh as having much to do with low back pain (LBP); however, it is one of the most important muscles groups to

11/18/2025

Whiplash is a slang term for an injury to the neck that occurs as a result of a sudden jolt, classically occurring in a car accident (though a slip and fall injury can sometimes result in a similar condition). In a classic rear-end collision, the car is struck from behind and accelerated forward

11/15/2025

Doctors of Chiropractic frequently see patients with carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). It is a very common condition and usually responds well to the non-surgical chiropractic treatment approaches including hand, wrist, elbow, shoulder, and/or neck manipulation, myofascial release techniques, wrist s

11/12/2025

Headaches are a common complaint in patients presenting for professional care, including chiropractic management. Patients with headaches seek chiropractic care because they find manipulation or adjustments applied to the cervical spine and upper back region are highly effective in reducing

11/12/2025

The chiropractic treatment of low back pain (LBP) has been reported to be very safe and highly effective. In fact, in 1994, guidelines were published recommending that chiropractic treatment of low back pain should be a first consideration / treatment of choice over other forms of back care healt