Back Pain - 5 Main Causes

Back pain, what's causing it and how do you start to treat it. Let's get straight into it...

Back pain causes - for people with long term pain

Firstly, have a scan through and see which of the back pain causes jump out at you. You have to get very honest with yourself here and not dismiss any potential cause. Often, the back pain cause we are unwilling to even consider is in fact, contributing to the cause.

1. Poor posture

This is number 1 on the list, because it is the number one back pain cause in clinic. Your body makes sure that all muscles are doing their job to keep you going throughout the day. When you have poor posture, you ask some muscles to do too much work. When this happens you get tight and painful muscles and then you're into back pain.

2. Poor movement technique (mechanics)

If you exercise, or have a job that requires much movement and your technique is off, back pain is never far behind. Poor mechanics in the long term can lead to the back getting progressively tighter. This is closely linked to the above back pain cause, posture - you are asking individual muscles to do too much work rather than spreading the load because your mechanics are off.

3. Digestive issues from poor diet

Dismiss this back pain cause at your own peril.

I have rehabilitated so many people who have seen professional after professional only to come into clinic and find out that the underlying cause for their back pain is a food intolerance or poor diet related issue.

How? you might say.

Simply put, the digestive system is on the same reflex pathway as the core muscles. So, you go about your day and your digestive system is aggravated, as a result your core muscles begin to shut down.

Without the core muscles working correctly what is supporting your back? Remember what we just said about posture and mechanics and asking muscles to do too much?!

There is a picture starting to form here!

4. Overweight

This can be a sensitive subject, because there are many reasons why a person may be overweight.

The point to consider is this, if you are carrying additional weight (in the form of fat cells), then you are asking the back muscles to work harder to support the additional load. Remember, when your back muscles have to pick up extra work, pain is never far behind.

In addition, extra weight only serves to aggravate the causes above and below.

5. The long and weak

If you are experiencing back pain, it may be due to some of your muscles becoming weaker over time. This weakening also causes the muscles to become too long.

Muscles can weaken for many reasons. Here's the same theme again - if there are muscles that have become weak then the load isn't being spread evenly across the muscles, so you are asking some muscles to do too much. When your muscles to do too much... you already know... back pain issues.

How do I begin to treat my back pain cause?

Give me a call! We will start by looking at everything that is going on in your body. We'll take a look at your posture, at which of your muscles are short and tight and which are long and weak. We'll look at your nutrition and diet and work to make small, manageable changes that will make a real difference to your day to day life.

A life free from pain is within your grasp. Contact me today and we can walk the path together to living a pain-free, healthy life.