Causes of back pain:
Our backs are formed of bones (our spine), ligaments, muscles, and intervertebral discs. The spinal cord runs in our back and sends nerves that supply muscles and receive pain impulses. Common causes of back pain include:
- Muscle or ligament injury: This can be seen in the workplace or sports-related injuries. Our muscles and ligaments can get sprained or torn. In most cases, the condition is mild and is manageable at home. Severe cases, however, need medical care.
- Bulging or injured discs: Our intervertebral discs are soft discs of cartilage that separate every 2 vertebrae (bony bodies). They act as shock absorbers and allow for smooth back movements. They can get injured acutely and bulge if you lift an excessively heavy object using your back muscles solely or in the elderly when they get less elastic. When those discs bulge, they compress the spinal cord or the nerves that come out of it causing immense pain. Some mild cases can be managed conservatively, while others may need surgical intervention.
- Arthritis: Although we commonly associate arthritis with joints of the hands, feet, or the knee joint, the back can also be associated with arthritis. This can also be a part of a special type of rheumatoid-like condition called ankylosing spondylitis. Patients with ankylosing spondylitis have severe back pain that limits their daily activities. They also suffer from morning stiffness and pain that improves on movement contrary to the other causes of arthritis that worsen on movement.
- Bone fractures: Bones of the back can be fractured in severe trauma like road traffic accidents or falling from heights. Back pain can be attributed to fractures of the spine or the pelvis.
- Endometriosis: Endometriosis is a gynecological condition that occurs when the inner lining of the uterus goes somewhere else in the body, commonly in the pelvis. The pain characteristically occurs with menstruation and improves on oral contraceptive pills.
- Pelvic inflammatory disease: Pelvic inflammatory disease is one of the complications of recurrent genital infections in females and is characterized by low persistent fever, coital problems especially pain or discomfort, and pelvic deeply seated pain. In some cases, the pain may be referred to as the back causing low back pain.
- Kidney problems: Several kidney problems can cause low back pain including upper urinary tract infection (pyelonephritis) and renal stones. In upper urinary tract infections, the pain is dull, while in stones, the pain is sharp and radiates down to the scrotum or vagina.
- Cancer: Back pain is not a common symptom of cancer by any means, but low back pain in a man above sixty with urinary symptoms can be a warning sign of prostatic cancer. The prostate is connected to the lower back by a complex network of veins through which prostatic cancer can spread. Prostatic cancer is not only cancer that spreads to the backbones, and other cancers may be the cause including multiple myeloma. Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that affects the blood cells within the marrow of such bones. The important thing to know here is that cancers make up less than 1% of all causes of low back pain and only a few danger signs should alert you to it as will be mentioned later in the article.