Back pain is often described as a sharp, stabbing sensation. It affects one in ten people worldwide and can make even the simplest tasks challenging. Back pain causes include various factors, such as spinal injuries, a history of back issues, nutritional deficiencies, poor posture, sedentary lifestyles, psychological factors, and prolonged sitting hours, which contribute to the development of back pain, which can lead to severe spinal complications.
Back pain generally falls into two categories: acute and chronic. Acute back pain lasts up to six weeks, while chronic back pain persists for over 12 weeks and significantly impacts one’s quality of life.
How do injuries cause back pain?
We often overstretch a muscle, which can sprain or strain spinal muscles and result in backache. Spinal injuries can lead to minor to severe problems, depending on the cause and damage to the spine. Minor strains cause most back pain, which can be painful but improves over time.
Physical injuries can happen while playing sports or due to an accident or fall. These can affect any body part but most commonly affect the lower back, resulting in a minor strain or damaging the spinal cord and causing spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis, and disc bulge.
Lifestyle Choices Affecting Spinal Health
Nowadays, we have adopted unhealthy sleep habits. People prefer to scroll through social media in their bed while lying down. This disrupts the sleep cycle and affects posture, and you wake up complaining about severe back pain and fatigue. It also reduces one’s quality of life. Furthermore, it can cause spinal muscle imbalances.
Eating junk food and not counting on nutrition can increase body mass and weight, exerting pressure on discs. Combining this with a lack of exercise makes bones weak and brittle and more prone to fracture. Adopting healthy lifestyle choices improves the quality of life, maximizes proper functioning, and boosts spinal health.
Psychological factors that influence back pain
Psychological factors such as stress, anxiety, and depression are co-morbid to back pain. Studies by NIH have shown that there is some relationship between depressive symptoms and spinal pain. Stress and anxiety hunch up shoulder muscles, increasing muscle tension and changing breathing patterns, leading to stiffness and increased sensitivity to pain. It affects the tailbone and lower back muscles, which directly leads to back pain.
Impact of work nature on spinal health
Manual labor and desk jobs both stress a particular part of the spine. An uncomfortable chair, lack of mobility, lousy posture, and sitting for prolonged hours in an office can cause spinal imbalances. Repetitive tasks, overuse of spinal muscles, and excessive weight lifting at manual labor can complicate spinal health issues. These work-related environments can result in shoulder pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, disc bulge, lower back pain, chronic back pain, disc herniation, and fractures.
Back pain due to fever or kidney stones
Backache can be caused by various medical conditions, each with different symptoms. A person with kidney stones might feel a sharp pain in the left or right side of the spine, depending upon which kidney is affected. This pain radiates from the lower abdomen to the groin.
Infections like malaria, other illnesses, or fever can cause back pain accompanied by chills and fever. It is a manifestation of infection or inflammation. It usually resolves with some rest and medications. Determining the root cause of pain is crucial for effective treatment.
Substance Abuse
An intervertebral disk is stacked with a soft nucleus pulposus material between each vertebra. Drinking habits dehydrate these vertebral discs, causing them to lose their flexibility. Dehydrated discs can shrink and become less effective at absorbing shocks, which irritates and compresses nearby nerves; this is a significant cause of back pain.
For people who consume alcohol regularly, over-the-counter medicines become prone to serious health concerns. This can cause gastric bleeding, liver damage, or potential overdose. It is essential to be mindful of the health hazards of self-medicating while consuming alcohol.
Surgical History
Lumbar spinal pain or back pain after surgical intervention is referred to as Failed Back Syndrome. A common problem of back pain after surgery is a lack of self-care or indulging in exercising or heavy work too soon. This is not a result of failed surgery but a body’s response to surgical intervention. Proper rehabilitation and self-care can significantly reduce backaches caused by surgical procedures.
Symptoms of backache
Back pain can be persistent or temporary. It can radiate from the lumbosacral region to the buttocks and thighs and vary with physical activity, time, and aging. The significant symptoms of back pain are stiffness, muscle spasms, decreased range of motion, and difficulty bending down or standing straight. If the pain persists for over a week, you must see a doctor.
Conclusion
Back pain is often experienced at some point in life. 18% of adults experience back pain, 1% of children younger than six years suffer back pain, and 80% of older adults have back pain. There are various causes of back pain, but the main ones are mechanical/structural problems of the spine, inflammatory conditions, and other underlying conditions. Strain or sprain of ligaments, high-impact sports, injuries, depression, anxiety, alcohol consumption, and spinal surgeries are the factors causing lower back pain.
To eliminate pain, adopt a healthy lifestyle and incorporate some activities to keep yourself active and pain-free. If the pain persists for more than two weeks, seek medical care. The doctor will run some tests to detect the underlying cause of pain and diagnose the condition accordingly.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):
1. What are the common causes of back pain?
Spinal injuries, a sedentary lifestyle, and prolonged sitting hours are the common causes of back pain.
2. What are the three leading causes of back pain?
Misaligned spine, Inflammatory conditions, and other medical conditions are the significant causes of back pain.
3. Can temperature cause back pain?
High fever indicates infection or inflammation, which causes back pain.
4. What can cause lower back pain in women?
Causes of back pain in women are menstrual pain, endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, fibroids, pregnancy-related back pain, ovarian cysts, and adenomyosis.
5. Causes of back pain in females at night.
Various factors can cause back pain at night, such as poor posture, inadequate support from a mattress or pillow, and previous injuries. It can lead to sleep disturbances and fatigue.
6. Causes of Lower back pain in men.
The most common causes of lower back pain in men are a sprain or strain of ligaments, disk injuries, misaligned spine, and arthritis.
7. What is the reason for back pain in children?
In children, reasons for back pain are high-impact activities, heavy backpacks, obesity, underlying conditions, scoliosis, or arthritis.
8. How might smoking be causing lower back pain?
Smoking is linked to causing back pain as smoking damages arteries in discs and joints, increasing the risk of pain and injuries. Furthermore, it causes osteoporosis, the leading cause of back pain.
9. Is poor posture causing your back pain?
Poor posture can cause changes in your spinal structure and result in spinal pain.
PS: If you have chronic pain, schedule an appointment with the expert team at KKT Orthopedic Spine Center.