Many people complain about experiencing back pain right when they wake up, but not many people know why this pain occurs. In an interview with the Health Channel, Dr. Georgiy Brosuvanik, a Spine Surgeon with Baptist Health South Florida, discusses potential causes of morning back pain. 

Dr. Brosuvanik explains that as you lose height, for example, when you bend over or scrunch up, various parts of the spine have to adjust to accommodate this movement. One of these parts are the facet joints, which are the joints that bind all of the bones in your spine. In order for the facet joints to bend and change, they have to destroy some cartilage to accommodate a new position of the spine. 

“Well, whenever anything changes in the human body, it produces a certain reaction. Now you can call it arthritis, but an intermediate stage to arthritis is essentially just joint stretch, which the body does not like,” Dr. Brosuvanik explains. To prevent this reaction, your body will do what it can to stop these joints from moving. 

When you wake up in the morning, those joints have not been experiencing your body’s full weight and they are in their least stretched position. So, when you start to stand up and do your morning routine, you are asking those joints to open up and move. This initial process involves stretching of the joint capsules and this is usually what gives you that hunched posture and lower back pain in the morning. 

With that being said, Dr. Brosuvanik warns that some late night pain or even early morning pain can be a sign of inflammation. “One of the first things I ask my patients is, ‘do you have night pain?’ If the answer is yes, to me that implies that there is a strong inflammatory component to their problem,” the doctor says. 

Watch the full segment of Dr. Georgiy Brosuvanik explaining the causes of morning back pain, here: https://youtu.be/vxt4qE5IscE