What are the initial treatments for back pain?

Practical basis, I normally suggest anything that works. So if paracetamol works to take the edge off your pain so that you can go on and do your normal activities and your normal chores day to day, that's absolutely perfect. You know, it's minimal side effect, well tolerated. However, a lot of people suffering in pain would have tried paracetamol and ibuprofen and things don't work for them. So then we use sort of the painkiller ladder and we start increasing doses of various types of painkillers starting from cocodamol going up the various strengths to using other more potent agents like tramadol or even morphine depending on the circumstances of what's causing pain. But you know some people will say you know you're just masking the pain, not getting to the root of the problem but there's a balancing act between giving you something that will help your pain in order to improve your function and at the end of the day it's maintaining and enhancing your function that's the most important thing, how to live with it, how to move and how to get by day to day to do the things that you would normally do.