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| Lower Back Pain | |
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Extracted from www.spine-dr.com If you have back pain you are certainly not alone. Estimate the 66% of adult Americans have recurring back pain. The question is; do you have to live with it or can you manage a way to live without it? The fact is that most types of back pain are manageable or treatable with some simple principles. Like a computer program, there are many menu options that you can choose for individual tastes and needs. The question is, are you in the right program? The first step is a simple list of questions to decide what the underlying cause of back pain is. List of Questions Do you have:
This is an indication that a nerve is being effected. Usually the effected nerve is in the lower part of your back and goes to a special part of your leg. Doctors refer to this as radiculopathy or sciatica. Basically, the nerve is pinched by a disc protruding into the spine or the ingrowth of bone from the joints (bone spurs). For either reason, the nerve is pinched or squeezed and is not getting enough blood flow. If it is a disc that is doing the squeezing, you may be in luck, since discs are 85% water. After they protrude, they can shrink in size and therefore stop squeezing the nerve. You know that people get shorter as they get older; that's because the discs are 85% when you are eighteen years old, but by the time we near our sixties, the discs should be down to 60% water. This is good. When we are eighteen years old we are strong, energetic, and flexible. But as we get older we want a more self-supporting spine so we don't have to spend as much energy to support our spine and keep it stable. We naturally become less flexible as we get older, but this has minimal effect on our function since we still have flexible hips and knees to stay active. This natural loss of water in our discs has somewhat inappropriately been called Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD). It is not a disease, but a natural condition or process of aging, and, as any doctor will tell you, is not necessarily associated with back pain or leg pain. The problem is your need to listen to the messages your body is sending to you. If your back doesn't want to bend but you keep bending it or try to keep it flexible, it will hurt. If you learn to relieve the stress in your back by having strong abdominal and back muscles and flexible hips, quads, and hamstrings (lumbar stabilization exercises), you can get rid of the pain. If pain is caused by a disc pinching the nerve, the disc can be:
Extracted from A Patient's Guide to Low Back Pain How you perceive spine problems Low back pain can be divided into two main types:
Mechanical type back pain results from inflammation caused by irritation or injury to the disk, the facet joints, the ligaments, or the muscles of the back. A common cause of mechanical pain is disk degeneration. A typical muscle strain, or lumbar strain, can also be the cause of mechanical type symptoms. Mechanical type back pain usually starts near the lower spine. Mechanical type pain may also spread to include the buttock and thigh areas. It rarely extends below the knee. Compressive or neurogenic (meaning nerve related) type pain occurs when the nerve roots that leave the spine are irritated or pinched. A common cause of compressive pain is a herniated disk. The nerves that leave the lower lumbar spine join to form the sciatic nerve. This nerve provides sensation and controls the muscles of the lower leg. Pressure or irritation on the nerve roots of the lumbar spine that come together to form the sciatic nerve can interfere with the normal function of the sciatic nerve. One of the earliest signs of pressure on a nerve root is numbness in the area supplied by the nerve. There is commonly pain in the same area, usually extending below the knee to the foot. In cases where there is pressure o a nerve root as it comes out of the spine, it is not unusual for the back itself to be painless. This can be confusing at times since there is no back pain - but the problem is located in the lumbar spine! Finally, the muscles that the nerve controls may become weak and the reflexes disappear. This is because the pressure on the nerve roots interferes with the signals from the brain to the muscles. There is no signal going from the brain to the muscle to tell it to contract. Spinal stenosis can also cause compressive type pain. In some people, degeneration of the spine can result in a narrowing of the spinal canal - the bony tube where the spinal nerves are located. This causes all of the nerves within the spinal canal to become inflamed, and fail to work properly. One problem that occurs when the tube is too small is that the nerves cannot get enough blood supply to work properly. The nerves may be OK when you are at rest, but if you become active, the nerves need more blood flow to get more oxygen. Because the tube is too tight, the blood supply cannot increase. One of the symptoms this may cause is numbness, which can involve both of the legs. The numbness may become worse with activities, such as walking. The pain can involve both of the lower extremities. The pain becomes worse with activities such as walking, and gets better after short periods of rest. Weakness of the muscles of both legs may also occur, and again, this may get worse when activity increases.
Further information can be found at: Bulging Disc |
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