You are what you eat. You are also how you move, how you think, how you feel, and how you love.
These are interesting statements to make at the beginning of a back pain website, but they are true enough. The way you eat influences how quickly your cells age, and your body's ability to heal from injury. The way you move, or more specifically, your posture and body mechanics, may affect how much strain and pressure is being put on the discs and soft tissues of your spine and lower back. The way you feel, and your ability to cope with adversity and pressure, may have an effect on your body's immune system and your body's experience of pain. Even the way we love may diminish or heighten our experience of pain.
How may emotions, coping skills, and even adversity affect the way that our bodies feel? Data and evidence has shown a strong connection of the role of psychology in pain management. Stress and anxiety increase the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for our fight or flight response. As this nervous system activity is amplified, the nerve fibers in our body that are responsible for sending pain signals to our brain become more sensitive and prone to firing.
On the other hand, it must be noted that life vitality and is not simply the absence of disease and psychological problems, but the presence of health. When people feel happiness and are in the presence of loved ones, the same centers of the brain that receive pain signals may also receive signals of comfort from other nerves. These nervous signals may compete with these pain signals and override them, to the point that the pain symptoms are diminished or eliminated. So far, we have attempted to make the point that the way we feel emotionally may have a direct affect on the way that we feel physically.
What is back pain? What is pain? Many dictionaries and medical journals describe pain as a symptom of disease. This symptom of disease is usually cause by a structural injury from within the spine itself, or due to structures that move and support the spine.
What causes back pain? The most famous cause of back pain that most people know about is a herniated disc. Other names of this back condition include a bulging disc, slipped disc, and prolapsed disc. These terms refer to the event where the outer lining of an intervertebral disc becomes eroded over time, or because of traumatic injury. When these discs tear on their outside covering, the gel-like contents in its interior press outwards. When this gel material impacts the spinal nerves exiting through the sides of the spine, back pain may be experienced, as well as associated symptoms (numbness, tingling, pins and needles, radiating pain).
In the various sections of this website, we will learn more about what causes herniated discs, what we can do to facilitate their healing, and what options are available when the certain disc treatments fail to provide the patient with relief.
Herniated discs are just one of tens or hundreds of possible causes of back pain. Here, we will take this opportunity to provide you with all of the possible causes of pain, as well as how they are diagnosed, and treated.
Back pain treatments include conservative therapies, including anti-inflammatories, other medications, and most important of all - physical therapy. Physical therapy will often be important to your recovery program. Physical therapy, done safely, should help you with your back condition no matter what it is. The back muscles and core muscles, which move and support the spine, may help patients overcome soft tissues injuries if they are strengthened and gain in flexibility.
This back pain resource aims to provide you with information about lower back pain, neck pain, back pain treatments, information and resources, and back pain products.