backpain

Your back is the workhorse of your body. You rely on it in almost each move you make. So even though your back is a well-designed structure of bone, muscles, nerves, and other soft tissues, it is vulnerable to injury and , either of which can be disabling.

Back pain is a common condition, occurring in four out of five adults. While backpain is most likely to occur at one time in your life, there are steps you can take to prevent it from happening to you or keep the pain from becoming worse.

Causes

Most backpain occurs in the lower back, where most of your body weight is supported. It is often a result of strained back muscles and ligaments due to any of the following activities:

* Improper posture
* Heavy lifting
* Sudden awkward movement
* Muscle spasm
* Stress

In some cases, however, backpain can be traced back to specific conditions, such as:

* Herniated Disk ? When the disk material presses on a nerve.
* Sciatica ? When a herniated disk presses on the sciatic nerve. The condition causes sharp, shooting pain through the buttocks and the back of the leg.
* Spinal Stenosis ? When the space around the spinal cord and nerve roots becomes narrow. Caused by arthritis and bone overgrowth. Pain results when a nerve gets pinched in the narrow space.
* Spondylosis ? A type of arthritis affecting the spine due to degenerative changes brought on by aging.
* Spondylolisthesis ? When one vertebra in the spinal column slips forward over another.

Since in any of these instances is premised on a definable cause, the treatment procedure is also easily identified. Back pain might also be caused by other specific conditions, not mentioned here because they occur only rarely.

Medical Advice

Home treatment and self-care are often the best method to take care of backpain. However, there are rare instances where could signal a more serious medical problem, in which case, medical advice is needed.

Take heed of the following symptoms of back pain:

* Constant or intense backpain, especially when lying down at night
* Back pain spreads down one or both legs
* Weakness, numbness, or tingling in one or both legs
* New bowel or bladder problems
* Abdominal pain or pulsation, fever
* Follows a fall, blow to your back or other injury
* Accompanied by unexplained weight loss

If you experience any of the above, then be sure to see your physician immediately. Additionally, if you are older than 50, seek physician?s advice about your backpain even when you do not experience any of the abovementioned symptoms. People with a history of osteoporosis, cancer, steroid use, or drug or alcohol abuse should also see the physician if they experience backpain.

Sports Physical Therapy

There are two kinds of back and leg pain. One is acute or short term back and leg pain which could last from periods of a few days to a few weeks. This type of is very common and may affect four out of five adults in the United Says. The other type of back and leg pain is chronic, lasting for more than two months.

Chronic back and leg pain might be a symptom of a more serious condition. It is advised that you visit the doctor if you suffer from that lasts longer than the normal two weeks to two months.

Here are some of the more common causes of back and leg pain:

Lumbar Spine Stenosis

This is a degenerative disease of the lumbosacral spine, affecting up to 90 percent of the U.S. population, most of them belonging to the middle aged or elderly age group. The disease is a major cause of morbidity, disability and lost productivity.

In lumbar stenosis, the cauda equina roots, a type of nerve found inside the spine, are entrapped within the dural sac, causing excruciating and incapacitating back and leg pain. This entrapment of the cauda equina roots is a result of progressive hypertrophy of any of the osseocartilaginous and ligamentous elements, soft tissues that surround the spinal canal.

Additionally, the degenerative changes or trauma could rupture or heniate the intervertebral verterbrae disc, which is composed of a gelatinous, centrally located nucleus pulposes and a peripherally located annulus fibrosus.

Lumbar stenosis mostly affects men and the middle aged to the elderly, although it could also occur in women and younger patients. Back and leg pain is the earliest complaint of this condition, which is often treated with some of the self-care methods available. This results in delay in diagnosis.

Sciatica

Sciatica is a condition affecting the sciatic nerve. Since this nerve travels from the lower back through the buttocks and into the leg, the pain often occurs in any of these affected areas. Back and leg pain as a result of sciatica can be more or less painful and is caused by a herniated lumbar verterbrae disc.

The degeneration (herniation) of the back disc causes it to compress onto one of the contributing roots of the sciatic nerve, causing sharp back and leg pains to shoot up. Often, the pain in the leg, posterior thigh, or foot can be much worse than the accompanying lower backpain. At the onset, the patient usually experiences painful pain in the buttocks which runs all the way down through the legs or foot. In some cases, there’s even no accompanying backpain.

Treating back and leg pain resulting from any of the two disorders mentioned will involve treating the disorders themselves. Any of the usual type of treatments available for normal back pains will provide little relief, if at all.

Sciatica