Lower Back Pain
Lower Back Pain
What Is Lower Back Pain?
Common causes of low back pain (lumbar backache) include lumbar strain, nerve irritation, lumbar radiculopathy, bony encroachment, and conditions of the bone and joints.
Nerve irritation: The nerves of the lumbar spine can be irritated by mechanical pressure (impingement) by bone or other tissues, or from disease, anywhere along their paths — from their roots at the spinal cord to the skin surface.
These conditions include lumbar disc disease (radiculopathy), bony encroachment, and inflammation of the nerves caused by a viral infection (shingles).
Bone and joint conditions: Bone and joint conditions that lead to low back pain include those existing from birth (congenital), those that result from wear and tear (degenerative) or injury, and those that are due to inflammation of the joints (arthritis).
Symptoms
Low back pain can cause a wide variety of symptoms and signs depending on the precise cause of the pain as reviewed above. Symptoms that can be associated with low back pain include numbness and/or tingling of the lower extremities, incontinence of urine or stool, inability to walk without worsening pain, lower extremity weakness, atrophy (decreased in size) of the lower extremity muscles, rash, fever, chills, weight loss, abdominal pains, burning on urination, dizziness, joint pain, and fatigue.
Suggestions For Managing Lower Back Pain
- Staying active as advised by your osteopath. Evidence suggests that staying active with even acute back pain gives you better long term results. You will not be harming your back if you stick you the recommendations.
- Osteopathic Manual Therapy may reduce muscle tension of the lumbar erector spinae muscles.
- Using a lumbar support or placing a lumbar roll behind your back while sitting.
- Gentle exercises to strengthen and support the lower back.
Your practitioner may refer you to a Sports Physician for further investigations if your lower back pain does not respond in our suggested time frames.
Your practitioner at Premier Health Partners is trained to determine the most appropriate form of treatment that is tailored specifically for you.
Lower Back Pain Care Options
Osteopathy
Osteopathy is a “whole body” system of manual therapy which uses a range of techniques to manage musculo-skeletal disorders and other functional disorders of the body. This form of treatment was developed in America in the 1870s by Dr Andrew Taylor Still and has progressed in development to be widely scientifically validated and utilised around the world.
