Table of contents:
- Conditions that cause chronic back pain
- 1. Muscle tension
- 2. Facet joint pain
- 3. Disc protrusion
- 4. Discogenic pain
- 5. Sacroiliac joint pain
- What are the consequences if the cause of your back pain is not properly diagnosed?
Understanding what causes your back pain is very important. Why? Because one type of pain leads to another, and causes a series of problems throughout the body's systems. This process is what causes back pain expand to other areas and and make the body out of sync.
When a patient first comes to the doctor to complain of back pain, the method of treatment is usually the same. Rather than using more specialized examinations to diagnose patients, many doctors choose to pass diagnosistrial and erroraka trial and error.
In fact, patients must be diagnosed with accuracy to see what is really causing their pain. Although the initial causes can vary widely, most lower back pain is caused by one of five problems:
- Muscle tension
- Facet joint pain
- Disc protrusion
- Discogenic pain
- Sacroiliac joint pain
For a complete explanation, see the following explanation.
Conditions that cause chronic back pain
1. Muscle tension
Muscle tension is the most common cause of acute back pain, and occurs in more than 95% of cases of acute back pain. When the back muscles are forced to work too hard, they go into spasm to protect themselves from further injury. Spasms and pain are warning signals from the body — and shouldn't be ignored.
Fortunately, back pain from strained muscles is usually mild, can be treated with medication, and usually resolves quickly without further problems — usually within a few days to a few weeks. However, while most strained muscles heal easily, for many people, muscle tension can be the beginning of a much bigger problem. Continuously forcing the back muscles to work can injure the muscles and lead to chronic back pain.
If the muscle tension lasts for more than a few weeks, you should consider whether it is really muscle pain or whether your muscles are protecting something else that hurts.
2. Facet joint pain
Facet joint pain, which is caused by inflammation of the facet joints in the spine, is the second most common cause of back pain. The facet joints connect the vertebrae, which are the bones that make up the spine.
In people suffering from chronic back pain, The facet joint is where the body sustains the initial injury, making it the most common gateway to chronic back pain. This is why patients with facet pain must act quickly to treat it before it spreads.
3. Disc protrusion
"Disc protrusion" refers to a number of MRI findings in which the smooth disk bearing two vertebrae protrudes and reverses toward the spinal canal, often causing pain. There are many variations of the classic disc protrusion, but these problems generally occur and are treated in the same way.
Disc protrusions are one of the most frequently diagnosed causes of chronic back pain — and also one of the most frequently overdiagnosed, because they appear easily on an MRI.
4. Discogenic pain
If the protrusion of the disc causes pain in the nerves and surrounding tissues, the discogenic pain originates within the disc itself. Since pain is coming from the disk, the sufferer feels pain every time he moves.
Discorgenic pain is felt in the middle of the back and can resemble facet pain, so it requires careful diagnosis. Like facet pain and disc protrusion, discorgenic pain can be triggered by trauma, but the underlying causes are often destabilization and muscle weakness.
5. Sacroiliac joint pain
Sacroiliac joint pain (or SI pain, for short) occurs in the sacroiliac joint. This is where the spinal column connects to the pelvis.
This joint is surrounded by ligaments that make the joint itself essentially immobile - or at least it is designed to be immobile. When the spine is not properly stabilized as a result bracing weak muscles, the body compensates by walking in a different way. Walking in this compensatory manner helps stabilize the spine, but as a result strains the muscles and stretches the ligaments around the SI joints so that they can no longer maintain joint strength.
Movements that shouldn't cause inflammation will cause pain. Although SI joint pain can be caused by trauma or genetics, it is usually the result of weakness bracing muscles caused by another form of chronic back pain.
What are the consequences if the cause of your back pain is not properly diagnosed?
When patients do not receive an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment to recognize the progressive nature of chronic back pain, the pain they feel will continue to develop. This can lead to weakness bracing muscles, which will cause more pain.
To deal with this problem, doctors and patients must work together and free themselves from wrong and outdated thinking about back pain. This is truly a revolution that has to start with the way we think about the development of back pain. We have to realize that the body is an instrument that must be tuned properly.
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