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Family Physician Chronic Back Pain Article
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The Many Causes of Chronic Back Pain
from:Chronic back pain is a serious problem today with many people, with around 20% of the population being sufferers of chronic back pain. Back pain is broken down into two types: acute, which lasts less than three months and chronic, which is more than three months. Chronic back pain usually does not start off that way, but turns chronic when it is not correctly treated. The reasons for lack of treatment vary. Some people have occupations such as trucking, where they feel they don't have the time to see a doctor. Other reasons are lack of medical insurance. In some cases, the sufferer underestimates the seriousness of their back problem or doesn't understand the causes of chronic back pain. In all of these cases, the problem may have been easily treated if medical treatment was sought early.
There are many causes of chronic back pain. Chronic back pain may develop from an injury such as an automobile accident or an accident at work. Illnesses may also be causes of chronic back pain. We have nerves on our body that send signals to the brain telling the brain there is pain. When we suffer from chronic back pain, the nerve signals are working steady for months or sometimes longer. There are other causes of chronic back pain such as the different chemicals in the brain that are responsible for suppressing pain not working as they should.
If the nervous system is damaged in an accident or from illness, these are often causes of chronic back pain. Because it is the nerves that are causing the patient to have the pain, it is often hard to treat the back pain with traditional pain remedies or treatments.
Other causes of chronic back pain may be psychogenic pain. Psychogenic pain is pain that is sometimes caused by a mental health or emotional problem. It does not come from the result of an injury or illness. With this type of pain, depression and stress can aggravate the pain and make it worse. It is said that the psychological and physical parts of our body work together often triggering something in each other. In cases like this, a doctor will often recommend therapy or counseling for depression.
There are also unknown causes of chronic back pain, which are the most difficult to treat. A person may go to a doctor with very painful chronic back pain and have nothing show up on the tests or X-rays, but still feel the pain. There are many sufferers that have to go through this. This type of back pain makes life very miserable for the sufferer. If there is time loss from work, it's hard to explain something that the doctor can't diagnose.
The largest causes of chronic back pain still are injury to the back. The injury may be a pulled or torn muscle, overuse of the back, improper bending, injury to the discs or ligaments. There are many important parts of the human back and each of them plays a role. This is why it's so important to always take good care of our body and not take one part of it for granted.
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