Back Pain – Common Misconceptions
Just over 80% of the population will experience back pain at some stage of their lives and most people don’t take the correct steps to manage their pain. There is a sea of information out there regarding back pain and navigating the waters is both daunting and intimidating. Here are some common misconceptions about your low back pain.
1. Resting Is Good For Me
Lying in bed or on the couch will cause your muscles and joints to stiffen, resulting in prolonged and possible persistent pain! It is important to keep moving muscles and joints as tolerated. A qualified physiotherapist will help you manage your symptoms and provide appropriate gentle stretches and exercises to help get you moving.
2. My Pain Is Tolerable, It Will Go Away If I Leave It
Pain is your brain telling you that something isn’t quite right. Sometimes pain is not indicative of the severity of the issue. The pain may increase over the course of days, weeks, or months. It is essential that you get checked out if you feel any pain that doesn’t readily settle.
The body always follows the path of least resistance. When you’re in pain, you may adopt alternate postures to protect your back, and you engage muscles and joints in a way they were not designed to be used, thus overloading them and causing further pain and dysfunction in other areas. This may cause you to present with a much more global picture of pain affecting multiple joints and muscles , than if you had addressed the problem sooner.
3. My MRI And XRAY Show Disc Damage Which Is Contributing To My Pain
Disc degeneration, prolapses, disc bulges and annular tears are highly prevalent in the pain free population. They are not strongly predictive of future low back pain and correlate poorly with levels of pain and disability. These changes are similar to getting grey hairs, a natural part of aging. Therefore the findings on these investigative scans are only relevant if they correlate with your actual symptoms. The spine is one of the strongest and most robust structures in the body, and is designed to move!