Back pain makes up for a large percentage of medical complaints. The good news is that back pain usually goes away within a few weeks if it was caused by pulled muscles. A backache can be one of the most difficult and frustrating problems for not only patients, but their doctors as well.

The key to proper treatment is understanding the cause of your back pain. Because in some cases it is hard to treat back pain, more knowledge and study of the causes will assist sufferers in their recovery.

The most common causes of back pain are:

Muscle strains are one of the most common causes of general back pain and or low back pain. Patients may not remember the beginning episode that provoked their muscle spasm, but the good news is that most occurrences of back pain from muscle strain totally disappear in a matter of a few weeks.

Back pain can be caused by a herniated disc, which is a ruptured intervertebral disc.

Discogenic is thought of as the most common cause of low back pain. Injury of the ligamentous disc of the spine, short of rupture, is the cause of discogenic pain in the back. A discogram may need to be used to determine if one's pain is discogenic back pain.

In older people, back pain is often the result of spinal stenosis. The spinal canal can become narrow and tight as we grow older, which could be due to arthritis and other conditions. Back pain can be a consequence of a very crowded spinal canal.

Arthritis is a disease that often causes pain in knee and finger joints. Unfortunately, arthritis can invade any joint, including spinal joints. Back pain when moving can be caused by arthritis in the spine.

When adjacent vertebra in the back become unstable and start "slipping", spondylolisthesis occurs, causing back pain. Degeneration, which leads to the reduction of normal stabilizing structures of the spinal column, is the most typical cause of spondylolisthesis. If the spine is unstable, back pain can become an issue.

It is difficult to determine the cause of backaches. The list cited previously is only a handful of the many causes of chronic back ailments. No one should have to suffer from extreme or long term back pain because a competent physician can diagnose and treat the cause.

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