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Why Am I Getting Back Pain

What Do You Do About Trigger Points And Fibromyalgia

Why am I getting pain at the BACK of my KNEE?

Those are both big, separate topics, but there are many resources on PainScience.com where you can get started. Self-massage and heating are by far the best ways to start working on muscle knots. Fibromyalgia is much more complicated, but the basics are sleep improvements, lots of light but thorough exercise, and learning about sensitization and the weirdness of pain.

Symptoms: Lower Back Pain And Stiffness That Is The Most Pronounced In The Morning And In The Evening

Includes any combination of the below symptoms:

  • Pain that interrupts sleep
  • Pain that is most pronounced first thing in the morning and again toward the end of the day
  • Localized tenderness when the affected area of the spine is pressed
  • Aching, steady or intermittent pain in the lower back that is aggravated by extended activity
  • Stiffness or loss of flexibility in the back

Facet joint osteoarthritis, also called degenerative arthritis or osteoarthritis of the spine, is a degenerative condition that develops gradually over time. The pain is caused by the breakdown of the cartilage between the facet joints in the spine. At first the symptoms may only be intermittent, but can later develop into steadier pain in the lower back, and may eventually cause sciatica in addition to lower back pain.

How Is Waist Pain Treated

The frontline treatment for Waist Pain which is caused due to overuse and excessive strain can be remedied by taking adequate rest and staying away from activities that may exacerbate the pain like repeated twisting, bending, stooping, lifting, pushing, or pulling. If possible, taking a few days off from work can also be helpful in treating Waist Pain. Apart from rest there are certain other methods for treating Waist Pain which will be prescribed by the treating physician depending on the cause of the pain. Some of the treatments prescribed by physicians to treat Waist Pain are as follows:

Medications: There are medications available to treat Waist Pain, which is caused due to muscle spasms in the form of muscle relaxants and medications like baclofen or valium. If the pain is caused due to herniated disc medications like tramadol or Cymbalta can be helpful. Apart from this antiinflammatory medications are also helpful for Waist Pain caused due to nerve injury or muscle spasms.

Application of Heat: Application of heat and ice also helps tremendously in treating Waist Pain. One can apply heat to the affected region alternating by ice for 15 to 20 minutes two to three times a day till the pain subsides.

Injections: If the above treatments are not effective in treating Waist Pain then the physician may prescribe steroid injections for pain relief and decrease inflammation of the nerve.

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Poor Quality Sleep And Insomnia Are Probably Major Causes Of Morning Back Pain

Dont get me wrong: some people sleep just fine and still have morning back pain. But poor quality sleep and pain tend definitely to go together,15 and mornings can be the roughest part of that link.

The more interesting question is the chicken/egg thing: which comes first? Pain or sleeplessness? Once you have both insomnia and pain, they surely cause each other, but one side of that equation is probably more important than the other, like a cyclist pushing much harder on one pedal than the other.

In 2017, Gerhart et al studied the which-came-first question of pain and insomnia in 105 chronic low back pain patients.16 Their subjects bravely filled out five detailed questionnaires per day for two weeks thats quite a lot of paperwork tracking and rating many aspects of their pain and sleep quality. The goal was to study lagged temporal associations: what tends to happen after what? Are bad sleeps often followed by bad days with back pain? Are rough days with back pain followed by lousy sleeps?

Yes and no to those two questions.

Poorer sleep was strongly linked to everything being worse which is about as surprising as a dog barking at a squirrel. Its the timing of that relationship that this study zoomed in on, and not only did a bad night clearly herald trouble across the board the next day more pain, more disability, more doom and gloom but especially during the early part of the day.

Which Lifestyle Factors Contribute To Lower Back Pain

Why Am I Having Back Pain? Is It Serious?

There are three major lifestyle factors that may affect your chances of developing lower back pain:

  • Multiple studies have established a link between smoking and lower back pain. Smoking raises inflammation inside the body and hinders the body from healing itself.
  • Obesity is also associated with several types of chronic pain, including lower back pain. In people with high body mass index , the stress on the spine increases, contributing to even more wear and tear.
  • Your level of physical activity can also play a role in your lower back health. While a sedentary lifestyle could increase your risk of developing lower back pain, so can excessive or strenuous physical activity. Check with your doctor if you are unsure about your ideal level of physical activity.

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Can I Prevent Lower Back Pain

You cant prevent lower back pain that results from disease or structural problems in the spine. But you can avoid injuries that cause back pain.

To reduce your risk of a back injury, you should:

  • Maintain a healthy weight: Excess weight puts pressure on vertebrae and disks.
  • Strengthen your abdominal muscles: Pilates and other exercise programs strengthen core muscles that support the spine.
  • Lift the right way: To avoid injuries, lift with your legs . Hold heavy items close to your body. Try not to twist your torso while youre lifting.

The Scariest Type Of Morning Back Pain: Inflammatory Back Pain

The closest thing to back pain that is truly prominent in the morning is inflammatory back pain , or spondyloarthritis.3 Although IBP is well known to medical science, it often eludes diagnosis, its biology is mysterious, and morning symptoms specifically are a stumper, as unexplained as joints that ache before a storm. Its just something IBP does.

But dont panic! Although studies have confirmed that morning is a common time for inflammatory back pain to flare up, they have also shown that the connection is not strong or exclusive.4 In fact, most morning stiffness and pain is not pathologically inflammatory. Its just that IBP is the only official morning back pain culprit.

The pain of IBP tends to be quite severe. If its not actually waking you up, its probably not IBP, or its a minor case.

When should you consider the possibility of IBP? Basically if your morning back is particularly bad: nasty and very consistent morning symptoms. The diagnosis is also more likely if you have other signs of this kind of back pain. Heres a good inflammatory back pain quiz, and heres my own quick checklist of reasons to ask your doctor about spondyloarthritis:5

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More Reasons Why You Might Be Suffering From Back Pain

Other than the above mentioned reasons, there are a couple more causes that could explain why you might be suffering from back pain. For all of these, we suggest consulting a doctor on how you can treat them appropriately in order to decrease back pain:

  • Pregnancy: When you are pregnant many things in your body inevitably change, and due to the extra weight your body now has to carry, it is understandable why you might be experiencing pain when you sleep. This back pain is often caused by the pelvic growth and the pressure this puts on your vena cava .
  • Kidney Stones: Kidney stones are known to cause severe pain in your side and lower back.
  • Endometriosis: a disease which targets the uterus can often cause pain in the abdomen, lower back or pelvis area. Endometriosis can often cause more severe pain at nighttime.

If your back pain does not subside or in fact worsens, even after trying these tips, do not hesitate to see your doctor as soon as possible.

This article is merely informative, oneHOWTO does not have the authority to prescribe any medical treatments or create a diagnosis. We invite you to visit your doctor if you have any type of condition or pain.

If you want to read similar articles to Why Am I Suffering From Back Pain At Night?, we recommend you visit our Diseases & secondary effects category.

Chronic Or Acute Pain

Why Am I Experiencing Back Pain? | TMI Show
  • Acute pain starts suddenly and lasts for up to 6 weeks.
  • Chronic or long-term pain develops over a longer period, lasts for over 3 months, and causes ongoing problems.

If a person has both occasional bouts of more intense pain and fairly continuous mild back pain, it can be hard for a doctor to determine whether they have acute or chronic back pain.

Back pain usually resolves with rest and home remedies, but sometimes medical treatment is necessary.

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How Can My Doctor Help

If your back pain is the result of IBS, your doctor may have a few options that would offer temporary relief of the symptoms. These include anti-spasmodics and anti-diarrhoeal tablets.

It may be more beneficial to try and determine the cause of the IBS and treat this accordingly in order to find a more long-term solution. Please refer to our causes and treatments pages.

What About Nocturnal Intervertebral Disc Swelling

This is one of the classic theories about why people seem to be more vulnerable to back pain in the morning.

Between every pair of vertebrae is a bit of padding, the infamous disc. They probably swell up a wee bit overnight. There are two studies that suggest this2930 . A 2016 paper speculates that disc swelling is why astronauts probably suffer from more disc herniations than they should.31 Weightlessness is undoubtedly like resting your spine, but its another long-term effect, so Im not sure how relevant the astronaut angle is its just a fun angle on the topic.

I saved this idea for last because its too speculative to be really satisfying.

Discs may swell, but that doesnt mean swelling discs hurt. Mild swelling is hardly a concern in itself, and most people dont wake up in pain, so its unlikely that swelling alone is a problem. Swollen discs may hurt more in the morning if theres already something wrong with them, such as annular tears,32 but such discs might well be uncomfortable regardless. Mildly herniated discs might swell and effectively be more herniated in the morning but many herniations are painless, so thats hardly a smoking gun.

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Slipped Disc Herniated Disc Bulging Disc Whatchamacallit

There is a possibility that you might simply strain your back muscles. In that case, the most typical pain pattern is less of a stabbing pain, but more of a tenderness sore area aggravated by movement.

A more likely condition in above situation is lumbar disc injuries. When people talk about different degrees of disc injuries, terms such as “herniating”, “protruding”, “bulging”, or “slipped” are thrown around casually and used interchangeability. They all mean a break in the integrity of the gel-like disc in your lumbar spine.

Sometimes tears form in the outer layers. Other times the inner content bulges out of the disc into surrounding tissues. The inner fluid content may also leak out of the disc and irritate nerve tissues.

Acute herniated disc has these common features:

What Causes Waist Pain

I Am Young

There are many causes which can cause Waist Pain. Some of the causes are as follows:

Pain in Waist Region Due To Injury or Overuse: If an individual gets injured in the low back or the waist area or if there is a muscle pull due to overstretching after a days work involving repeated bending, twisting, pushing, or pulling can cause Waist Pain. A direct trauma to the waist area can injure the organs in the region resulting in Waist Pain. Iliac crest contusion or hip pointer injury often is a common cause for pain in the wait region.

Disc Herniation:Another cause of Waist Pain can be herniation of disc. This is by far the most common cause of Waist Pain. The reason behind this is that because of herniation there is increased pressure on the spinal cord which pushes the cartilage to the sides which then gives rise to nerve compression resulting in pain in the waist area.

Stress: Excessive stress and anxiety disorder can also cause pain in the waist area.

Obesity: Being overweight can also put extra pressure in the lower extremities including the waist and the low back region causing pain in these regions.

Outfit: Tight fitting clothes, especially in the waist can compress the nerves and cause Waist Pain.

There are certain medical conditions which can be a cause for Waist Pain. Some of these medical conditions are:

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Misunderstandings You Must Correct To Stop The Pain In The Morning

If youve been struggling with countless times of waking up with a very sore back, you are not alone.

Have you reached the point where rest and medication are no longer a suitable option? Even though it seems like you are feeling better, the very next time you awaken becomes yet another ordeal.

I have found that there are a lot of mistakes that we all make to cause this. At least 8 of them so far! But the best way to overcome the morning struggle is to tackle them one at a time.

Treatments For Back Pain From A Specialist

A GP, specialist or physiotherapist may recommend extra treatments if they do not think your pain will improve with self-help measures alone.

These may include:

  • group exercise classes where you’re taught exercises to strengthen your muscles and improve your posture
  • manual therapy treatments, such as manipulating the spine and massage, which are usually done by a physiotherapist, chiropractor or osteopath
  • psychological support, such as cognitive behavioural therapy , which can be a useful part of treatment if you’re struggling to cope with pain

Some people choose to see a therapist for manual therapy without seeing a GP first. If you want to do this, you’ll usually need to pay for private treatment.

Surgery is generally only considered in the small number of cases where back pain is caused by a specific medical condition.

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Low Back Pain Fact Sheet

If you have had lower back pain, you are not alone. Back pain is one of most common reasons people see a doctor or miss days at work. Even school-age children can have back pain.

Back pain can range in intensity from a dull, constant ache to a sudden, sharp or shooting pain. It can begin suddenly as a result of an accident or by lifting something heavy, or it can develop over time as we age. Getting too little exercise followed by a strenuous workout also can cause back pain.

There are two types of back pain:

  • Acute, or short-term back pain lasts a few days to a few weeks. Most low back pain is acute. It tends to resolve on its own within a few days with self-care and there is no residual loss of function. In some cases a few months are required for the symptoms to disappear.
  • Chronic back pain is defined as pain that continues for 12 weeks or longer, even after an initial injury or underlying cause of acute low back pain has been treated. About 20 percent of people affected by acute low back pain develop chronic low back pain with persistent symptoms at one year. Even if pain persists, it does not always mean there is a medically serious underlying cause or one that can be easily identified and treated. In some cases, treatment successfully relieves chronic low back pain, but in other cases pain continues despite medical and surgical treatment.

How Is Back Pain Diagnosed

Why am I having chest pain?

Most people who develop low back pain that comes on suddenly have nonspecific low back pain. If there are no other associated symptoms and the pain is not too bad, many people are confident to just ‘get on with it’ and treat it themselves – and indeed most get better quickly. However, if in doubt, see your doctor for a check-over and advice.

A doctor will usually want to ask questions about your symptoms and to examine you. Basically, the symptoms are usually as described above, with no other worrying symptoms to suggest anything serious or another cause of back pain . The examination by a doctor will not detect anything to suggest a more serious cause of back pain. Therefore, a doctor can usually be confident from his or her assessment that you have nonspecific back pain.

As a general guide, if any of the following occur then it may not be nonspecific low back pain, and there may be a more serious underlying cause. But note: the vast majority of people with low back pain do not have any of the following symptoms or features. They are included here for completeness and as an aid to what to look out for and to tell your doctor should they occur.

  • Symptoms that may indicate cauda equina syndrome. The main ones are, in addition to back pain:
  • Numbness around the back passage – the saddle area.
  • Bladder symptoms such as loss of bladder sensation loss of bladder control, incontinence, loss of sensation when passing urine.
  • Incontinence of stools .
  • If you inject street drugs.
  • Read Also: Exercise For Lower Back Pain Mayo Clinic

    Lumbar Sprain Or Muscle Strain Could Be To Blame

    Your lower spine is supported by a network of soft tissues, including muscles, tendons, and ligaments. If you feel irritation, muscle spasms, or tightness across your lower back, hips, or buttocks when walking, the tissues may be damaged. This can lead to lumbar sprain or muscle strain.6

    What are the Symptoms of Lumbar Sprain and Muscle Strain?

    When you sprain or strain your lumbar spine, the soft tissues in your back can become aggravated and inflamed. The pain can range from slight to debilitating. Depending on the extent of the injury, you may experience:

    • Muscles spasms
    • Stiffness or soreness in your lower back
    • Restricted range of motion
    • Tightness in lower back muscles
    • Pain that radiates from your back to your buttocks7

    Possible Causes Of Lumbar Sprain And Muscle Strain

    You can strain your lower back by pulling or twisting your lower back muscles suddenly or awkwardly. Chronic strain can occur if you overuse muscles in a repetitive fashion.

    Remember the old saying, Lift with your legs, not with your back? You can also experience muscle strain by lifting something improperly or by putting too much stress on your back muscles.

    Lumbar sprain can occur when one or more ligaments in your back are stretched beyond their normal range.

    This can happen after a fall, an unexpected twist, or a forceful blow to your body.

    Excessive activity from aerobic exercise or low-impact exercise can cause a sprain. Displaying incorrect form while exercising can also be troublesome.

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