Back pain is mostly caused by straining your muscles or by your nerves getting pinched. What we’ll discuss here are ways to not only tell what is actual back pain and what is not, but also some techniques that have been shown to positively provide that much sought after relief. It doesn’t matter if the pain is in your lower back, along either side of your back or up around your shoulders or neck.
Pain in Your Muscles
Most back pain is caused by muscle strain due to unbalanced back muscles.
Straining your muscles is the biggest reason for getting back pain. This condition is also known as pulling your muscles.
When strain is placed on your muscles, or you overextend your tendons, you could tear those muscles or tendon, and this will lead to either straightforward pain, or it could develop bruising or swelling, even a burning feeling in the muscle. This is different than when a temporary spasm of your muscles causes extremely sharp pain. This effect is only temporary and will go away soon enough.
You can strain your muscles by moving suddenly but severely. This can also happen because you didn’t prepare your muscles for any activity that will utilize your muscles strenuously, such as warming up before a sporting event or exercising.
It might happen because you are working with a previously injured muscle that hasn’t healed properly yet, so you end up making it worse by re-injuring it. Having a poor posture, using certain muscles over and over again (like typing or lifting), and some accidents can all lead to muscle strain and subsequent pain.
The best thing to do for any muscles that are injured is to give them a rest. Ideally, don’t return to the activity that caused the injury in the first place.
Apply a treatment of both ice and medication that helps reduce swelling and inflammation soon after the injury. Ibuprofen is an excellent and easy method to accomplish this, as it will help deal with both the pain and the swelling.
It will usually take around six weeks for a pulled muscle to become fully healed and functioning again. During the interim, getting massages, ultrasounds and visits to the chiropractor can help prevent any build up of scar tissue from forming on the muscle, and will help make those muscles flexible once again.
It will also help in keeping the muscle from becoming injured again. At around the three-week mark in the healing process, it would be beneficial to start the injured muscles on a light exercise routine.
Sciatica and Pinched Nerves
Another common cause of back pain is Sciatica or pinched nerves from a herniated disc.
A majority of the pinched nerve situations that happen in the lower back are due to getting a disc that is herniated or pushed out of place, or a condition known as spinal stenosis.
This condition can lead to sciatic nerve pain, which is nearly unbearable pain that ranges from the lower back region on either side of the torso, through the rear end and deep down into the feet and legs. Another cause of sciatic pain is when the muscle of the piriformis irritates the nerve when it goes past the hip. This is called piriformis syndrome.
Another name for discs that have become herniated are slipped discs. This might also be referred to as a bulging or rupture disc, or a degenerative disc disease or prolapsed disc. It really just depends upon who you are speaking with.
Anyway you name it, though, it all means one thing: pain. This is because the disc pinches down on the roots of the sciatic nerve as it leaves the spine and heads downward. As the disc presses down or rubs against the nerve sciatica is the most common result.
Another way to get sciatica is to have the nerves going through the piriformis region become pinched. Piriformis syndrome is the most likely reason for sciatic pain when no cause can be found in the spinal column.
Even though sciatica and lower back pain are more often caused by nerves that have become pinched, don’t think that the upper back and shoulder muscles or the muscles in the neck area are not going to suffer a similar fate. Pain can occur not only in these areas but along the arms, when a herniated disc is involved. It is just a matter of where that herniated disc is found.
The most common reason for nerve-related back pain can be found in the imbalance of muscles and their use in the way we sit or carry ourselves. We tend to favor one side of the body or set of muscle groups over another and this will create stronger and healthier muscles in those, while the weaker ones tend to stretch and be overburdened to the point of injury.
Poor posture and accidents can equally create these imbalances of the muscles. As time wears on, herniations of the discs along the spinal column can become involved, and this leads to eventual back pain.
Treatments For Back Pain
You can get relief from back pain caused by pinched nerves, even if only for a short time, with the use of ibuprofen and hot packs. Sometimes injections of cortisone will help, as will stimulation of the injured area through electric currents. Treatments using ultrasound have been effective and also a combination of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicines. Lastly back pain exercises can have therapeutic value as well. However, if you are seeking a long-term solution, then you have to identify the source of the nerve damage and remove that cause.
Quite a few means of surgery exist to take care of discs that have become herniated. However, surgery should be the very last treatment you consider, because of the risk involved as well as the fact that most of these surgeries end up not successfully solving the problem.
The good news is that, if you wait an average of six to twelve weeks, your herniated disc will find a way to heal itself. During and after this healing time, you should spend the recuperation period trying to correct any imbalances to your muscles and any poor posture habits that have led to the problem, so that a repeat of the pain doesn’t happen.
