Back Pain

We’ve all heard the statistics about back pain affecting 80% of people and being the leading cause for missed work. So why is back pain so prevalent and so hard to treat?

 Your back is complicated, and although symptoms may vary, they are often the same even if the problem is different. That makes diagnosis more difficult. Your joints are for the most part avascular. That means there isn’t much blood flow, so nutrition isn’t as accessible as it is in your muscle, which has a lot of blood flow.  Cartilage gets most of its water and nutrition through movement, just like squeezing a sponge under water. Many of our daily activities put a lot of pressure on your joints in your back without a lot of movement.  This leads to desiccation, or water loss. Eventually your joints will break down and arthritis forms. Injured joints also develop inflammation, and because there isn’t a lot of movement, healing time is pretty slow.

There are as many types of treatment for back pain as there are reasons for it. Pain medication and steroids are very common, but as you know, they do nothing to fix the cause, so let’s ignore those for now.  Surgery can be risky, and as a few years ago, the American Medical Association stated that most patients experiencing back pain that received surgery were no better off after two years than those that didn’t. Is this because surgery doesn’t work? Often time, surgery does exactly what it’s supposed to, and can be beneficial…if it’s done for the right reasons. As I stated, it’s hard to diagnose exactly where the pain is coming from. There are many different structures, ligaments, muscles and nerves in your back. Narrowing down where the problem is coming from isn’t as easy as checking your symptoms because they can mimic other problems.

Conservative treatments are best to try first. Most physical therapy and chiropractic treatments address the source of the problem with minimal risk of side effects.  Even a minor surgery comes with long term risk and almost all have side effects of scar tissue.  Chiropractic care works by restoring motion into the joint, which brings nutrition and water to the injured area, and allows your body to heal itself more quickly. Pressure and irritation are removed from the nerves, which act as communication for every system in your body.  And while the exact cause of pain may not be that easy to pin down, adjustments and exercise work on broad areas of your back, improving the chances that the affected area will improve.

No one wants to be in pain, so it’s understandable that pain medication and steroid injections are very popular, and sometimes necessary to be productive during the day. Just remember that while you may feel better, you need to actively address the cause of your pain too, to make sure that it doesn’t become a worse problem later.