Low Back pain/Backache

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Lower back pain can leave individuals bedridden for days. The lower back cradles a great deal of a human being’s body weight, and helps support your entire body whether you are standing, sitting, or lying down. Did you know that lower back pain is the second most popular reason to call in “sick” to work, only behind the common cold? Not only is back pain debilitating, but also extremely common! People who suffer from lower back pain chronically understand what it’s like to lose days, even weeks on end while lying in bed with no ability to move. It’s frustrating, and can really create a barrier between you and living a productive, healthy, happy life.

back_pain3Even worse, there appears to be no good way to deal with back pain if you only listen to what most doctors say. There’s plenty of pain medication available, of course, but the pain medication doesn’t solve the root problem of what’s triggering the back pain. There are many reasons that people suffer from lower back pain, including slipped discs and strained muscles. Taking medicine might dull the pain, but it wont’ solve these problems – there’s also the distinct chance that you might end up injuring yourself worse if you numb the pain from your injured back and go about your business as usual.

Pain is important. Pain is what tells us that there’s a problem that needs to be fixed, and if you are a sufferer of chronic lower back pain, prolotherapy might be the answer that you seek. Prolotherapy is a surgery free, pill-free way of managing your back pain, and it can even help your lower back heal to the point where you no longer need any sort of medical therapy, be it pills or anything else.

Prolotherapy for the lower back involves injecting small amounts of medicine between the bones and muscles of where your pain is occurring. In this vein the prolotherapy helps alleviate pain immediately in the area while encouraging the muscles to strengthen themselves again – due to the chronic bad posture that most humans have, lower back pain develops. Prolotherapy helps strengthen those muscles again.

In the event that your back pain is caused by a slipped disc, a personal regimen of chiropractics and prolotherapy can be employed to strengthen muscles, eliminate pain, and solve bone issues. Relief from lower back pain is possible. Prolotherapy makes it happen.

The first step in determining ligament laxity or instability in the lower back is by physical examination. The examination involves maneuvering the patient into various stretched positions. If weak ligaments exist, the stressor maneuver will cause pain. 

Do this simple test at home

Lie flat on your back and lift your legs together as straight and as high as you can, then lower your legs. If it is more painful to lower your legs than to raise them, laxity in tile lumbosacral ligaments is likely. During physical examination by a physician, laxity can be "tested" by palpating various ligaments with the thumb to elicit tenderness. A positive "jump sign" indicates Ligament laxity.

Low back pain is one of the easiest conditions to treat with Prolotherapy injections

Ninety-five percent of low back pain is located in a 6-by-4 inch area, the weakest link in the vertebral-pelvis complex. At the end of the spine, four structures connect in a very small space which happens to be the 6-by-4 inch area. The fifth lumbar vertebrae connects with the base of the sacrum This is held together by the lumbosacral ligaments. The sacrum is connected on its sides to the ilium and iliac crest. This is held together by the sacroiliac ligaments. The lumbar vertebrae is held to the iliac crest and ilium by the iliolumbar ligaments. This is typically the area treated with Prolotherapy for chronic low back pain.

Sacroiliac Ligaments

The diagnosis of ligament laxity in the lower back can be made relatively easily. Typical referral pain patterns are elicited-the sacroiliac ligaments refer pain down the posterior thigh and the lateral foot, the sacrotuberous and sacrospinous ligaments refer pain to the heel. The iliolumbar ligament refers pain into the groin or vagina. Iliolumbar ligament sprain should be considered for any unexplained vaginal, testicular, or groin pain.

The most common cause of unresolved chronic low back pain is injury to the sacroiliac ligaments which typically occurs from bending over and twisting with the knees in a locked, extended position. This maneuver stretches the sacroiliac ligaments, placing them in a vulnerable position.

Surgery to relieve back pain is often unnecessary and unsuccessful. SOME 200 million Americans suffer from back pain at some point in their lives; every year almost half a million of them undergo surgery to relieve the pain. Yet several recent medical studies have concluded that many patients who elect back surgeries don't need them.

For example, an article in the medical journal Spine stated that as many as 70% of those who underwent back surgery still suffered from back pain for up to 17 years after the surgery.

How does one know if one needs surgery?

If you are in such excruciating pain that you cannot tolerate it, then you probably need surgery. This is especially true if the pain extends from your back down into your legs. This means there is pressure on the root of the nerve going out of your spine into the legs. There are drugs to alleviate such pain; Upjohn's NSAID helps reduce inflammation and pain in the spine. Exercise, too, often helps. But if so-called conservative care--drugs or physical therapy--hasn't brought relief within six weeks, doctors will usually recommend surgery.

How successful the surgery

How successful the surgery will be depends on what's causing the pain. The most frequent reason for back surgery is a ruptured, or herniated, disk. A disk is an oval-shaped shock absorber that's situated between the bones that make up the vertebrae. The disk has a nucleus made of a thick, jelly-like substance; ligaments wrap around and contain the nucleus. But when these ligaments tear, part of the nucleus bursts out and flows into the spine, putting pressure on the nerves in the spinal column and causing pain.

The disk may rupture simply as a function of age. But disks can also be ruptured by a sudden trauma--yanking on a stubborn lawnmower engine cord, say--or by repeated twists and turns of the body-playing tennis, for example, or skiing moguls.

Of the half million back surgeries performed every year in the U.S., over 300,000 are to remove parts of ruptured disks or whole disks. These are the most straightforward back operations; about 90% of them are successful, says Garth Russell senior surgeon at the Columbia Spine Center in Columbia, Mo. The patient stays in the hospital for three days and goes home pain-free. The cost of such an operation ranges from usd $5,000 to $12,000, including the hospital stay.

But Russell says that as many as 90% of people who suffer herniated disks would be cured equally well with physical exercise or medication. Why then do so many elect surgery? Because the exercise and medication relief take weeks or months, and people with back pain want immediate relief. Says Russell: "Patients come in and say: ‘Doc, do something-fast! I want to get back to work, I have payments on my house, I want surgery.' "

Adds Joel Press, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern University's medical school: "I was treating eight cardiologists with ruptured disks, and seven of them chose to undergo surgery." At the $1,000 a day the average U.S. cardiologist earns, it makes economic sense to get back to work as fast as possible.

Much less straightforward than ruptured, or herniated, disk problems are cases where patients suffer chronic back pain caused by degenerative disk disease. In such cases the patient may not feel any pain in his or her legs, but may experience excruciating pain in the back. What happens is that as the disk degenerates--that is, grows old--it releases a substance that irritates the nerve roots, causing pain. Surgeons can correct the problem by fusing two or more vertebral bones together; the joint doesn't move, the disk becomes inactive and stops producing the irritating substance that was causing pain.

Sounds simple enough, but it isn't. Columbia Spine's Russell estimates that of the 150,000 operations performed every year in the U.S. to fuse vertebrae, fully one-third will fail to ease the patients' pain.

ligament

A herniated disk can cause excruciating pain. Your disk can rupture by itself as you age. But it can also rupture from sudden trauma--say, when you yank on a stubborn lawnmower engine cord...

 

The problem with degenerative disks is that doctors cannot be sure what is actually causing the pain. A herniated disk shows up on X rays and CAT scans and gives doctors something to go after; hence the 90% success rate for ruptured disk removal operations. But with degenerated disks there are no good tests to determine that pain is actually coming from the disk-X rays or CAT scans don't show them. And if it turns out that a degenerated disk isn't the cause, then fusing the vertebrae does nothing.

“It's extremely frustrating," says Russell. "The same operation may work on one patient, and be a complete failure with another."

For patients who have tried many pain killers drugs, steroid injection or physical therapy without success, there are hope with specialized prolotherapy treatment from the proloclinics.