If you’re like most people, all you want to do is sit or lie down after the onset of lower back pain. In some cases, it may be a good idea to rest for a day or two—but read on to learn more about the dangers of prolonged rest for people with lower back pain.
See Lower Back Pain Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Treatment
There are numerous structures in your spine that may be the cause of your lower back pain. See Spinal Anatomy and Back Pain
To help understand this complicated topic, this article presents a model for understanding symptoms, physical findings, imaging studies and injection techniques to come to a precise diagnosis.
See Getting an Accurate Back Pain Diagnosis
Once an accurate diagnosis of the cause of the lower back pain is attained, treatment options can be selected based on today’s best medical practices.
The low back supports the weight of the upper body and provides mobility for everyday motions such as bending and twisting. Muscles in the low back are responsible for flexing and rotating the hips while walking, as well as supporting the spinal column. Nerves in the low back supply sensation and power the muscles in the pelvis, legs, and feet.
See Back Muscles and Low Back Pain
Most acute low back pain results from injury to the muscles, ligaments, joints, or discs. The body also reacts to injury by mobilizing an inflammatory healing response. While inflammation sounds minor, it can cause severe pain.
There is a significant overlap of nerve supply to many of the discs, muscles, ligaments, and other spinal structures, and it can be difficult for the brain to accurately sense which is the cause of the pain. For example, a degenerated or torn lumbar disc can feel the same as a pulled muscle – both creating inflammation and painful muscle spasm in the same area. Muscles and ligaments heal rapidly, while a torn disc may or may not. The time course of pain helps determine the cause.
See Pulled Back Muscle and Lower Back Strain
Low back pain can incorporate a wide variety of symptoms. It can be mild and merely annoying or it can be severe and debilitating. Low back pain may start suddenly, or it could start slowly—possibly coming and going—and gradually get worse over time.
Depending on the underlying cause of the pain, symptoms can be experienced in a variety of ways. For example:
In addition, symptoms of lower back pain are usually described by type of onset and duration:
See Types of Back Pain: Acute Pain, Chronic Pain, and Neuropathic Pain
There are many ways to categorize low back pain – two common types include:
See Radiculopathy, Radiculitis and Radicular Pain
There are many additional sources of pain, including claudication pain (from stenosis) myelopathic pain, neuropathic pain, deformity, tumors, infections, pain from inflammatory conditions (such as rheumatoid arthritis or ankylosing spondylitis), and pain that originates from another part of the body and presents in the lower back (such as kidney stones, or ulcerative colitis).
It is also possible for low back pain to develop with no definitive cause. When this happens, the primary focus is on treating the symptoms (rather than the cause of the symptoms) and the patient’s overall health.
For subacute and chronic lower back pain, a thorough diagnosis is important to lay the foundation for appropriate treatment and rehabilitation. Lower back pain treatment reduces the likelihood of recurrent back pain flare-ups and helps prevent the development of chronic lower back pain.
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