One of the most common complaints that people are likely to experience is lower back pain and symptoms often seem to manifest themselves for no clear reason at all, which can make it quite difficult to work out what’s causing the problem and what to do about it.
Sometimes, it’s clear what’s causing the issue and this is known as specific back pain, including conditions like a prolapsed disc, a fracture, facet joint pain or inflammation of the spinal joints and ligaments.
Non-specific back pain, meanwhile, is the most common type of back pain and is often down to strain on the muscles, ligaments and tendons, although it can be hard to diagnose just what the root cause is.
Risks of experiencing back pain can be increased by being inactive, being obese, lifting heavy objects, standing up for a long time, depression, stress or having a demanding job. As such, it may be necessary to evaluate your lifestyle to see if there’s anything there that could be taking its toll physically.
It can also be easy to interpret pain in other areas of the body, such as the bowels, pancreas or kidneys as back pain. And, in rare cases, back pain can also be down to something more serious, such as an infection of some kind or cancer.
In the majority of instances, back pain can be managed by yourself and it can often resolve itself relatively quickly, but if you don’t find that it improves after two or three weeks, or if the pain gets worse over time, you may want to consider seeking medical advice from your GP or a physiotherapist.
We will be able to diagnose lower back pain from your symptoms, as well as carrying out a physical examination. From there, we can provide you with relevant exercises to improve mobility, posture, muscle strength and flexibility, as well as helping with pain management and providing manual therapy like massage and spine manipulation.
If you’d like to come and see us for physiotherapy at our Maidenhead clinic, get in touch with the Clear Physio team today.
