3 Reasons why lower back pain can stay with us

1/ Contributing factors: Meaning dysfunctional muscles and joints surrounding the injured area.

• If joints above and below are stiff this adds excessive shear stresses to the injured joints.
• If muscles surrounding the injury are weak/have poor endurance/or lack efficiency and coordination then this also can add to increasing compressive loads from superficial muscle overactivity as a mechanism to counteract the weakness. Pain free is not the end of the story, contributing factors are important to work on with your physiotherapist.
• If these contributing factors remain so will your back pain, pain may just lie dormant for a while after some direct treatment.

2/”I’ll wait and see if it heals itself”: This can severely delay rehab and sometimes can increase intensity of pain. When soft tissue is damaged in your body it needs the perfect internal and external environment to heal. This means treating your body like a temple. To do this adequately seeing a trained health professional is key.

3/ Prolonged cortisol in the body (stress hormone): Science has shown us the long periods of stress causes the cortisol to start a process called protein catabolism. This means our tissue starts to deteriorate and healing either gets delayed or slows down significantly.