Your experiences with heat vs ice for back pain.
I herniated a disc in my L5/S1 two years ago and was previously using heat for the pain which helped. Recently I had an ESI after a bad flare up which seemed to increase my sensitivity even more for a while. The pain is mainly due to muscle guarding in my lower and upper back. I was advised to ice for the first few days after the injection and then to return to heat. I was improving but flared again from overdoing it which seemed to cause a lot of inflammation and only ice would settle it. After a recent visit to the GP, he told me to only use heat as ice will make it worse. I took his advice and flared more. Now ice seems to be the only thing to dull the pain and settle my flares. Even tonight after icing, I felt a bit stiff so I tried some gentle heat (once I had returned to room temperature) - the pain came back tenfold. I’m so confused as to why heat helped for almost 2 years but since the ESI it seems to be the worst possible thing. Anyone got any ideas what’s going on? Am I essentially making things worse long term with ice? I figure if it’s helping then it must be okay but I’m wondering about other’s experiences.