Back Pain Is Very Common

Back pain is probably one of the most common things that afflicts Americans, according to Neurosurgeon Jobyna Whiting, who explains that most Americans will suffer at least one episode of major back pain during their lifetimes, “because throughout our lifetime the low back bears the brunt of our load and the work that our back is doing.”

“The spine is divided into multiple different areas. The first seven bones being the cervical spines. The next 12 being the thoracic and that’s where the ribs are attached and then the lumbar spine. That’s where people usually get back aches. When people talk about back pain they’re typically talking about their lumbar spine and maybe the very top of their sacrum,” says Whiting.

The specialist adds that when all the weight of the body rests on these bones, “almost everyone is prone to back pain, despite early symptoms, like childhood scoliosis, because they’re more clinical than anatomical, but everybody is prone to it,” Whiting says.

Transcript

Doctor, Why is lower back pain it’s almost an epidemic in this country it feels like you’re right and and that’s a great question actually back pain is probably one of the most common things to afflict Americans and most Americans will suffer at least one episode of major back pain during their lifetimes this tends to be in the low back you’re correct with that and the real reason is because throughout our lifetime the low back bears the brunt of our load and the work that our back is doing we have a bio digital animation here that really will help illustrate where the back pain occurs and how the different components are set up in the spine sure what we’ve got here is the entire spine from the cervical down to the sacrum and so the spine is divided into multiple different areas you’ve got the first seven bones being the cervical spine the next 12 being the thoracic and that’s where your ribs are attached and then when we’re talking about the low back we’re typically talking about the lumbar spine and that’s where people are usually getting back aches when they’re talking about back pain they’re typically talking about their lumbar spine and maybe the very top of their sacrum and what happens there in the lower spine that causes this pain well what happens is that you’ve got your weight from your entire body coming and settling down on to this area we’ve got bones as you can see here the vertebral bodies and they’re interrupted by discs and discs are more of a shock absorber kind of a situation and you can have problems either in the bone or in the discs or even in the elements that connect those things together or they connect the muscles to the bones by looking at a spine on someone can you tell if they’re going to be susceptible to lower back problems later you’re their early warning signs well their early warning signs are more clinical than they are actually anatomical you can have some very specific situations like scoliosis as a child that could set you up but for the most part it’s normal wear and tear and just about everybody is prone to it