Back pain. The Physical Therapy approach. Part I

How many times someone comes to you asking about treatment possibilities for their aching back? How many times you must explain that pain in the back isn't just nowadays condition and that it is pretty much important to find a cause, treat it properly and off course take good prevention steps to avoid next painful episode? And tell me, didn't you experience, as a therapist, annoying pain in the lower back after the long working day, although your know all about proper posture and prevention?

If you answered "yes" on some of the previous questions you should read this article and recap your knowledge of back pain!

Origin Like any other condition the back pain has their origin, a place and reason why all that started. When I was studying, we learned that back pain is caused by stresses on the muscles and ligaments that support the spine after which a strain, sprain, or joint damage occurred. The areas in the back that typically result in pain complaints are the neck and low back (lumbar area). Both the neck and lumbar area have the most rotation and are under the most stress from activity. The stresses include traumatic injury, bad posture habit, lifting injury and prolonged emotional tension. But after reading the article: "A Functional Look at Back Pain and Treatment Methods" wrote by Lawrence Gold I become familiar in one completely different explanation of back pain cause, and I really need to share that with you. The author says: "Two basic conditions contribute to lactic acid build-up in muscle and thus, to back pain: chronic muscular hyper tonicity and disorganization of the fascial network (connective tissue)". So, reasons for hyper tonicity and disorganization of the fascial network are the same (traumatic injury, bad posture habit, lifting injury and prolonged emotional tension...), but we get 'deeper' in tissue and find out that after the back trauma lactic acid build-up begins, which results in joint compression and in a long term joint degeneration.

Symptoms Oh, it is a waist of time explaining the symptoms of back pain. Who, actually, doesn't know them from their one or another close person experience? And to be honest, there are no expressions for good explanation. You just can't describe it with words, because this state appears in most unpredictable situations. It often appears when your have "dead line" with your computer program? When you started to pack for an incredible weekend…, Or, you came to pick up your son in the kindergarten, picked him up and the pain occurs...?

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