If you suffer from lower back pain, do not feel alone. This is one of the most common reasons someone visits a chiropractor. Gibson Chiropractic understands lower back pain, its causes, and the best ways to treat it. We have helped many just like you in the Laredo area to overcome and avoid the causes of pain in the lower back.
All about Lower Back Pain
The lower back is known in medical circles as the lumbar spinal region. Regardless of what you call it, it is a remarkable structure. The lower back is comprised of interconnecting bones, muscles, ligaments, nerves, and joints that all work in unison to provide the upper body with support, strength, and flexibility.
Is it any wonder then that this area is prone to injury? If any single component in that complex assemblage becomes disrupted, injured, or otherwise out of sync, there are repercussions that extend throughout the entire system.
Common Causes of Lower Back Pain
Pain in the lower back is most frequently caused by soft tissue injury. These injuries include inadequate movement of spinal joints, compression of nerve roots, and impairment of the intervertebral discs.
Tearing or pulling a ligament and/or muscle in the lower back is the most widespread cause of lower back pain. Regardless of whether it is a muscle or ligament that is strained or sprained, the symptoms and treatments are identical.
The most common causes of strain and sprain include:
- Twisting the spine while lifting
- Improperly lifting a heavy object
- Sudden movements and falls that place additional stress on the muscles and ligaments of the lower back.
- Continued poor posture for a prolonged period.
- Excessively forceful impacts and twisting of the body like those experienced during contact sports.
Strains are caused by overstretching the muscle, resulting in rips in the muscle. Sprains often happen when straining and ripping affects the ligaments that connect the bones. These injuries are often short-lived and easily corrected.
However, there are also some more serious, chronic causes for lower back pain.
Serious Causes of Lower Back Pain
If pain lasts longer than three months it is considered beyond the body’s natural ability to heal and thus, chronic. This type of pain is usually caused by an irritated nerve, a disc problem, and/or a joint issue.
The most common causes for this type of lower back pain are traumas such as fractures or dislocation, degenerative disc disease, dysfunction of the facet or sacroiliac joints, spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis, herniated lumbar disc, and osteoarthritis. Other, less common, causes of lower back pain include autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s, Lupus, and fibromyalgia, as well as tumors and osteomyelitis. The last is an infection that is extremely rare, severely painful, and life-threatening.