Common Causes of Lower Back Pain – Anatomy Of Lower Back

One of the most common complaints of our patients day in and day out at Back in Motion is lower back pain.

Hi, I’m Dr. Scott Gray. I’m the owner of Back in Motion in Fort Myers, Florida. In this article, I’m going to explain the most common causes of lower back pain and why low back pain occurs. This naposim is part one of a four-part series all about the common causes of low back pain.

Lower back pain affects roughly 8 out of 10 or 80% of people who will experience it at some point in their life.

The fact is, we spend the most money on lower back pain conditions as a society worldwide because it’s such an issue regarding people day in and day out.

Anatomy of the Lower Back

A couple of the reasons why the lower back is vulnerable to pain and injuries is because the lower back is actually in the middle of our body.

And it has to deal with all these forces that come from my trunk, but also these forces that come up from the ground, whether that be walking, sprinting, jogging, bending, lifting, and twisting.

Now, in regards to the anatomy, there are a couple of different areas of the lower back that are more prone to others.

Typically when we’re speaking of the lower back there is a disc which is a key part of the back that usually gets injured.

This usually happens with people that are hyper flexible or that sit for a prolonged period of time. The disc acts as a distributor of force across the segments of the spine.

Now, the other part of the spine that commonly gets injured is called the facet joint. And this is usually where arthritis occurs and it can cause compressions.

These types of patients will typically have lower back pain when standing for a prolonged period of time or when walking for a prolonged period of time.

Now, the other side of it is just your simple lower back muscle sprains and strains. That would be all the muscles across in the lower back that occur.

Whether you bent over and picked your grandchild incorrectly.

Maybe you were lifting in the gym and doing some deadlifts you probably strained the back and those muscles.

Pinpointing The Cause

And I think something to not based on the current research, a lot of people think that when you have a lower back pain issue, that it’s a serious thing. And it is, no doubt about it.

But only 1% is roughly a red flag or a condition that is going to require surgery. A lot of times these tissues can heal on their own.

You just need the right provider.

You need the right treatment and you need the right assessment to know exactly what it is that you’re actually dealing with.

I think that’s where Back in Motion and the Gray Method™ steps in and that our providers can assess your spine and discern okay, is it a disc?

Is it the facet joint? Or is it the muscle ligaments?

And so we can really discern that with our three-step process and get to the root cause of it most importantly.

A lot of people out there who have lower back pain go to see medical providers for treatment, but they never really fix the cause of it.

For example, if you have a herniated disc, they may be able to fix it with an epidural or surgery, but do they ever get to the root cause of it and figure out why it’s occurring and how to prevent it from happening again?

Or why is my facet joint getting irritated every time I swing the golf club.

We, look at the three key areas of the body with the Gray Method™, which is the thoracic spine, the hips, and the feet.

When those things aren’t working optimally or there are some weakness and stability issues, you’re going to compensate at your lower back.

The fact is your lower back is just the symptom.

In Conclusion:

In a recap, we spend the most money in the world on lower back pain from a muscular-skeletal standpoint.

Eight out of ten people will experience lower back pain at some point in their life. And it doesn’t really need to be that way.

Your herniated discs or a disc injury is typically where a lot of people get injured.

The facet joints and also just some simple muscles and ligaments tend to get irritated or strained causing low back pain.

It’s important to remember that you are not alone and you can fix these things by getting to the root cause of it.

Stay tuned for the next blog post, where we go a little bit deeper into the causes of low back pain.