The Real Causes Of Back Pain – A Short But Comprehensive Review
/0 Comments/in pain clinic, pain treatment, Uncategorized /by Tobias HallIntroduction To The Real Causes Of Back Pain
There are many possible causes of lower back pain. Some are extremely common, and thankfully, others are scarce. We should be thankful that some causes of back pain are rare because the rarest causes are often the most serious for our health.
Meanwhile the ultra-common causes of back pain are far less serious in terms of immediate threat to our health. Whilst even the most common causes of back pain are not favourably for our health in the long term whatsoever.
Very Serious Causes Of Back Pain
The least common cause of back pain may be spinal tumours. Spinal tumours can most definitely cause lower back pain, but thankfully, that’s an infrequent occurrence. When they do happen, they tend to be tumours of the spinal bones and, in rare cases, the spinal cord.
Another rare cause of lower back pain is an infection of the bones of the spine. Infection is, thankfully, an unusual cause of back pain. However, it can happen that the body sometimes develops infections that can spread to the spinal bones like tumours can spread around the body.
Spinal injuries that involve severe fractures and damage to the spinal cord are another evident and severe cause of back pain. Which thankfully doesn’t happen too often.
Tuberculosis, or TB, is another cause of back pain, which, thankfully, also doesn’t turn up very often. So if you have back pain, it’s not very likely at all that you have TB, but all of these things are worth considering.
In very rare cases, a person who has a secondary disease in their internal organs, more likely kidneys, can develop back pain. In these cases, the pain is almost a phantom pain that isn’t truly happening in the bank but is spreading from the internal organs.
Somewhat Serious Causes Of Back Pain
Moving on to less serious but more common causes of back pain, the causes are chronic, non-life-threatening diseases, like auto-immune diseases.
A fairly uncommon cause of back pain is inflammatory arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis can affect the spine or other joints, which then causes pain to the spine. Psoriatic arthritis is a complication of psoriasis. It is another auto-immune or inflammatory condition that can affect the spine. Ankylosing Spondylitis is a third form of inflammatory arthritis that can affect the spinal tissues and cause spinal pain.
Beyond the spectrum of auto-immune conditions that can cause back pain, there is another somewhat common cause: standard osteoarthritis, the type based on wear and tear.
Beyond the age of 50, every human being on the planet has some level of osteoarthritis in their spine. Thankfully, 99.9% of this arthritis doesn’t cause any pain whatsoever.
Yet, in some instances, this common garden-variety osteoarthritis (which amounts to physical wear and tear of the spinal joints) can cause pain.
Spinal arthritis can eventually lead to disc damage and bony growths called osteophytes. In some instances, these can lead to pain, especially if you get really unlucky and they press on a nerve. Take some heart from the fact that these instances are actually far rarer than most people realise.
All of the causes of back pain we’ve mentioned so far are considered back pain caused by primary diseases, meaning that the back pain is secondary. None of them are too common, but it is essential to rule all of them out. Correct medical tests, like lab work and scans, can identify these issues quite easily in most cases. However, back pain alone is not a reason to order lab tests or scans. When people have more severe causes of back pain, like those mentioned, there tend to be undeniable signs that a scan or an X-ray is required.
By far, the most common causes of back pain in humans are those that are more mechanically based rather than disease-based.
Regular ‘Mechanical’ Back Pain
If you have stubborn back pain, the chances are that it is mechanical. And if it’s really bad, you may have some stress-related/ emotional factors adding to it.
The core comprises the abdominal wall, the pelvic floor and the diaphragm. Imbalances in these deep muscle groups are a significant cause of back pain because they deprive the spinal tissues of the support they need to form lifestyle activities without damage occurring to the tissues. With a strong core, the stresses of things like heavy lifting and desk work are tolerable. With a weak core, these day-to-day stressors can cause irritation to the spinal tissues and lead to back pain.
There are other less significant mechanical causes of back pain, like the types of broader muscle imbalances seen in office workers, for example, ‘lower cross syndrome.’ But those issues are much less significant and less common than weakness deep in the core.
A classic and common cause of mechanical back pain is issues with the feet and legs. We take millions of steps every year on very hard surfaces that our bodies are not designed for.
A deeply significant cause of the most stubborn cases of back pain is neither mechanical nor disease-based. This factor is emotional stress. Much research has shown that many chronic back pain sufferers are people who have been through highly stressful periods in their lives or are currently going through highly stressful periods of their lives.
It can be a little harder to understand the connections between stress and back pain because they involve deep brain structures that process pain and pain pathways through the spinal cord. Without needing to fully understand the complex neurology behind the fact that chronic stress can turn into chronic pain, the research is unequivocal that a very significant number of the worst back pain cases are either caused by stress or made far worse than they need to be by stress.
In Closing
So, on reviewing the causes of back pain, it’s clear that we should be careful to rule out the more severe disease and injury-based causes of back pain.
Yet for most who are suffering from back pain, the call is to look more closely at our mechanics and our stress levels.
If we wish to find a long-term resolution to back pain, we must learn to provide health care for back pain sufferers at this level; once we do, we will begin to see a sharp decrease in what has become the number one cause of disability on our planet.
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