There are many causes of lower back pain. Most cases of lower back pain are caused by mechanical malfunction or structural defects from injury or chronic physical stress.
The most common and widespread cause of mechanical lower back pain is subluxation. Subluxation is a term that refers to two adjacent spinal bones (vertebrae) that are malfunctioning. They may be misaligned with each other or the usual freedom of movement has been lost.
This may occur as a result of an injury, but often times stems from our daily activities of bending, lifting, stooping, etc. Chronic postural strain from our work or daily activities may also cause subluxation to result in lower back pain.
Once the joints have lost their normal motion and/or alignment that triggers other processes to kick in.
Nerve endings within the joints send signals to the brain that joint malfunction has occurred, which results in the brain telling the surrounding muscles to tighten up. This is a protective measure to “splint” the joint and prevent further damage. The problem with this is that it causes further loss of motion and yes, you guessed it, even more reciprocal muscle spasm.
The next event to occur is nerve facilitation or irritation. The nerve roots that exit between the two spinal bones become irritated. At first, this causes abnormally high amounts of nerve impulses to be sent outward to wherever that particular nerve goes. The nerve irritation will cause hyper-function of that end organ. For example, the middle back nerves supply the stomach. If you are subluxated in the mid back or thoracic spine, the nerve facilitation will cause increased acid production which could result in an upset stomach or heartburn and often diarrhea.
After a period of time the nerves become “burned out” from facilitation and they begin to lessen their activity. This results in the end organ slowing down its activity. As in the example above, this would eventually result in not enough stomach acid being produced causing maldigestion and the associated problems of bloating, gas and constipation.
If a subluxation has been around long enough, damage or deterioration of the soft tissues begins. In particular, the discs begin to lose become dehydrated, shrink and crack. Long standing dehydration leads to disc bulges and/or herniation. This is noticeable on x-ray as a loss of disc height and on MRI as disc dessication (dehydration), bulging or herniation.
The final process is bone remodeling. Due to chronic malfunction and loss of normal disc function the body begins laying down extra bone to try to bridge the gap of the joints and fuse the spine in order to protect it. This is visible on x-ray as bone spurring and lipping.
Subluxation is the most common causes of lower back pain and ahs a wide variety of signs and symptoms. In order to repair or correct subluxation, your doctor must first know how to locate subluxations, measure them and then lay out a strategic plan to eliminate them.
For more information on back pain caused by subluxations and how to accurately diagnose it, follow this link:
http://www.spinediscrehab.com/locate_cause_of_back_pain.html
