Back pain can make your life very miserable, wearing you out, turning even the simplest tasks like picking up something that you've dropped on the floor, into a nightmare. Of course, drugs can be prescribed, but they usually have temporary effect, and some of them also come with various other harmful side effects. 

There are a couple of drug-free and natural ways to prevent and even get rid of back pain. So, here are 5 of them that you should consider:

Improve posture
Bad posture puts a lot of unnecessary strain on the spinal column and on your back muscles. Unfortunately for many people, their every day bad posture is induce by their work or their working place, and they can't do much about it. One of best ways to improve posture is walking straight, making sure that you walk at least one hour per day. 

Exercise
There are many types of exercises that can alleviate and prevent back pain. Many people that go to the gym focus on losing weight of building muscle mass, totally disregarding the effects of their exercises on their bone structure. And for many, back pain can occur due to excessive strain on the spine during heavy lifting. 
A simple exercise that anyone should do, for the health of the spinal column should be done as you wake up. All you have to do is sit straight, close your eyes and slowly rotate your head about 10 times to the right and then 10 times to the left. You'll actually feel the impact of this exercise throughout your whole spine.

Massage
Evidently if you're experiencing upper back pain, and neck pain, in some cases you can even massage yourself. But a proper back massage can only be done by a professional and probably requires multiple sessions until the problem is gone. So, you might consider seeing a specialist masseur.

Pillow
Back pain can be induced by bad posture during your sleep, and one of the main factors that cause it, is an inappropriate pillow. Nowadays there are many therapeutic types of pillows, and you might want to try one of those. However, as a general idea, to avoid back pains it's best to sleep with a small pillow, or a round, Japanese pillow.

Bath salts
Lack of magnesium in your system can affect muscle, nerve and enzyme functions, and in some cases resulting in back pain. There are so called back pain bath salts, bath salts based on magnesium sulfate which can help a great deal not only with your back pain, but also with muscle soreness. Plus, a bath with aromatic salts will always be very relaxing. 

 
There are actually a few variations of this recipe, with different basil and mint "elements". I'm going to try to cover them all, here.

You'll need:

1 cup - Pacific Sea Salt
3 cups - Epsom Salt
6-8 drops of Mint Oil
6-8 Dried and Crushed Basil Leaves
Optional: Green Food Coloring

You can change the Epsom salt with different other salts, like Dead Sea salts or Himalayan salt, if you want. However, Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) has quite a few benefits. Read more about the benefits of Epsom salt, here: Epsom Salt Benefits

If you want, you can use the same amount of basil oil instead of mint oil, but in that case, you should use dried and crushed mint leaves. Or, you can use peppermint oil instead of mint oil.

Regarding the dried leaves, it's best to buy fresh basil (or mint, if you're going with the second version), and dry and crush the leaves yourself. Don't purchase them already dried because you never know for how long they've been on a shelf, or in that particular jar, and how much of their aroma they have left. Plus, if you buy them already crushed and packaged, you never know what else that mixture contains, it just may contain other plants as well.

The preparation of the bath salts is simple. Mix the Epsom salt and the Pacific sea salt into a large bowl, add the mint oil, drop by drop, continuously mixing, to obtain nice and even mixture. Spread the mixture in a thin layer on a plate and leave it to dry for a few minutes. 

Once the mixture has dried out, put in a jar, add the dried and crushed basil leaves, seal the jar and shake it firmly so that the salts mix evenly with the basil leaf fragments. You will obtain a nice white-greenish bath salt, with green specks from the basil leaves. 

You can also add green or yellow food coloring, or whatever food coloring you think would fit best to this type of bath salts. Also, if you want to obtain a nice, decorative look you can color only half of the mixture and leave the other as it is, adding layers from the colored and non-colored salts in the jar.

For more cool bath salts recipes, visit this site: www.homemade-bath-salts-receipes.com
 
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Especially if you've been working on your own bath salts recipe, you probably have bumped into the term Epsom salt. I'm sure you would like to know a thing or two about it, before mixing it into your bath salts recipe. So, here are a few tips regarding Epsom salt. 

What is Epsom salt? 

Epsom salt is actually magensium sulfate, an inorganic chemical compound, a salt that contains oxygen, sulfur and obviously, magnesium. It has a high degree of solubility in water and has hygroscopic properties (absorbs water), being highly used as a desiccant. 

Why is Epsom salt named Epsom salt? 

First of all, it's encountered in nature as a mineral called Epsomite, which draws its name from the Epsom town in Surrey (England). The magnesium salt here was produced by the springs that arise where the London clay meets the porous chalk hills of North Downs. 

What are the uses of Epsom salt? 

If you've been using Epsom salt or you're planning to use for your homemade bath salt recipe, you are already aware about one of the uses of it. However, Epsom salt has quite a variety of other uses. It's used in agriculture for improving the growth of crops, athletes use it for the soothing of sore muscles or it can be used in medicine as a detoxifier for the digestive tract. Also, it can help a lot with the healing of cuts and for the easing of bug bites.

Are there any easy homemade bath salts recipes based on Epsom salts? 

There are plenty to choose from. For example, for a nice recipe, with a therapeutic, relaxing effect, you can use 3 parts epsom salt, 1 part dendritic salt, and 2 parts sea salt. Add 6-7 drops of eucalyptus essential oil and sandalwood fragrance oil and let the oils be absorbed in the salt crystals. You can also add food coloring for the fun of it, if you want. For a bath, you should add about 1/2 cup of a composition like this at a bathtub of hot water. By the way, if you want to find out more on how to make bath salts with epsom salt, you can just visit this website: makebathsalts.com