Back pain can range from a minor ache that comes and goes over the years that you mostly ignore, to the kind of excruciating pain that stops you moving at all! But does the level of pain indicate how “serious” the problem is? In short – No. Take the example of stubbing your toe, an incredibly painful experience for most people. It’s certainly not life threatening though. At the same time, other conditions can be much more “serious” and have very little pain associated with them until the condition reaches a crescendo. Back pain is similar to this and to understand more, read on!

The Different Types of Back Pain

Back pain can range from a deep ache to a sharp pain. It can be local to the lower back, or it can cause radiation down the leg or round to the front of the hip. These different types of pain indicate the different structures being injured.

Disc pain and arthritic pain tend quite often to begin as a deeper pain. However, Disc pain from a herniated disc or slipped disc can often be severe! Then compare this to the dull, nagging and constant pain that is often associated with degenerative disc disease. And this is only a small part of the  “lower back” you could also have the sharp pain that is often coming from the facet joint – the small pair of joints on the back of the spine.

You can see that the types of pain are quite important in determining what area the pain is coming from, but there can be false positives and red herrings that confuse the picture immensely in some patients’ presentations of back pain.

Why Does The Pain Severity Differ

Pain differs mostly because of the degree of sensitivity of specific tissues. Facet lock pain can be paralyzing in some cases, leaving you hardly able to move. But this sort of problem is not a “severe” problem. The facets are very important in feeding back information to the brain on movement so the brain can tell the muscles how to react. There is a lot of two-way traffic.

Discs, on the other hand, have a very poor nervous supply. The brain doesn’t really know too much about whats going on there. Therefore, disc pain gives you a more “area pain” when compared with the specific facet pain with can be extremely localized.

In everyday living we don’t need to know the conditions of our discs as they are deep within the body, this is why the brain doesn’t spend that much of its attention on specific parts of the disc. It’s very similar to stomach pain – often an area.  It is only when disc pain becomes much more advanced and starts to affect surrounding structures too, that the pain may begin to focus on a more specific area.

Serious Causes Of Back Pain – That May Not Be Painful

From time to time in the clinic, we see more serious causes of back pain, like spondylolisthesis or prostate cancer. These are two examples chosen specifically because they are “serious” issues. A spondylolisthesis is a “broken spine” and prostate cancer is of course cancer.

Having seen these cases in the clinic, one thing is clear, they do not always have the levels of pain attached to them that you might expect. Cases like these will commonly show up similarly to the broad disc-like pain. Not necessarily particularly intense but constant. Sometimes they are more or less asymptomatic in the early stages.

Why It’s Important To Check

Unfortunately most of the time it is excruciating pain that drives patients to our door. However, if treatment is sought sooner rather than later you will fare a lot better.

Serious causes that need urgent attention will be caught sooner. Progressive and degenerative conditions can be halted and short-term acute injuries can be treated to ensure more effective healing. Like anything early intervention, which may sometimes just be advice, is better than ignoring the pain or “soldiering on”.

Who Is Best Qualified To Help.

We are! Our registered Osteopaths are qualified to examine, diagnose and treat your back pain. Unfortunately, we tend to see patients after rounds of visiting their GP, which invariably involves them leaving with some sort of prescription for pain relief.

Because results are important to us (and you) we pride ourselves on giving our patients great service and if scans are needed you most certainly will not be waiting weeks or months!

What To Do Next

If you already have your diagnosis then treatment would be the next step. So whether you’re in need of just starting the road to real recovery, or you need to begin with an examination to figure out whats wrong, call us today to really get to the bottom of your back pain. Let’s start you on the right path to recovery!

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