Alcohol can be indirectly implicated in many problems in the body and back pain can be one of them. Though alcohol’s effects do not affect the bones, it crucially has an effect of decreasing the immune systems efficiency and over time this can cause a large number of diseases and conditions that the body would naturally repair to go undone. This is all extrapolative theory and can be confirmed with the advice of a doctor.
Back pain can be of two types, muscular and bone. The predominant and only bone in the lower back is the spinal cord and while most of the pain that is associated with the lower back is caused in the soft tissue and muscles, the existence of disease, like osteoarthritis, means that skeletal system could also be at fault. This can be ascertained by analyzing the pain. If it is a throbbing pain that is continuous regardless of pose, position and stance, then there is something that has probably gone wrong with your father’s skeletal system that also includes the ligaments and joints. If this is the case then your father might be facing osteoarthritis and the hot packs will serve no purpose in that situation. If the pain occurs in a specific event or position, then you can be certain that the muscles and soft tissue are probably to blame. Unfortunately, a hot pack is still not the correct treatment for the pain. With these general guidelines, you should be able to understand the problem better but at the end of it, you still need to have a doctor take a look at it.
In the meantime, and mostly irrespective of what the diagnosis is, you can try some of the following remedies on your dad. One part of the remedy involves the use of herbs, while the other requires some physiotherapy and pain alleviation. Most important would be reducing alcohol intake. The herbs to use for pain relief and reducing inflammation are ginger, feverfew, turmeric, black pepper, and chili. All of these herbs, with the exception of pepper, have anti-inflammatory, pain relieving properties. Pepper’s role is to increase the absorption of the other herbs. These should all be added to food or soups and had daily. The physiotherapy part of the cure lies in acquiring some balms that contain menthol and performing a massage on the afflicted area. The objective of any massage is to improve the circulation of the area and muscles so there is no need to apply excessive pressure while doing the massages.