Welcome to Back Pain Guide
Pregnancy Lower Back Pain Article
. For a permanent link to this article, or to bookmark it for further reading, click here.
You may also listen to this article by using the following controls.
Doing an About Face with Low Back Pain
from:Almost everyone experiences low back pain at some time in their life, and usually it’s more than once. Pain in the lower back can happen to anyone at any age for a variety of reasons.
* Bulging disc
* Herniated disc
* Osteoporosis
* Arthritis
* Degenerative disc disease
* Pinched nerve
There are other causes for low back pain too, including injuries or spine defects. Degenerative disc disease is usually age related. It’s when the soft center of the disk loses water and becomes dry due to the natural aging process. This causes the bones in the spine to become misaligned as the supporting material collapses.
Low back pain can also occur when you injure the muscles or ligaments in the back. The spine itself is not causing the pain, but rather the muscles. Muscle injury can result from daily activities not handled properly. For example, if you lift a heavy object incorrectly, you can strain the muscles. But injury can also occur as a result of something more serious like a car accident or slipping and falling. Sudden falls can cause the spine to compress or the muscles to twist in ways they aren’t meant to twist.
The treatment for low back pain varies according to the cause of the pain. Pain is defined in 3 ways. There’s acute pain which is pain that occurs suddenly, lasts less than approximately three months, and then diminishes as the cause of the pain is healed. For example, you may strain a muscle in your back one day while picking up a heavy box. After a month of hot or cold compresses (depends on type of injury) and careful physical movement, the muscle will heal and the pain goes away. This is acute pain.
Chronic pain is pain that lasts longer than 3 months. It can be pain that continues even after all known causes of the pain have been corrected, or pain you live with due to an uncorrected back problem. Chronic back pain can simply be miserable for the person enduring the pain. The cause of the pain isn’t visible to anyone else, like a broken arm or leg, but it can limit mobility to a large degree.
Recurring back pain is pain that comes and goes without end.
Many times, low back pain is the result of a muscle sprain. This kind of injury is painful, but fortunately the injured muscle usually heals. A sprained low back can result in muscle spasms or sharp pains when you move a certain way. You can get pain relief most of the time from over the counter anti-inflammatory medications and movement restriction for a few days.
Of course, there can be more serious causes of low back pain. They include osteoporosis, disc disease, arthritis and spinal injuries. If you experience chronic or recurring back pain, you should work with a physician to determine which techniques for healing or pain control best fit your situation.
Pregnancy Lower Back Pain News
Pre-pregnancy exercise may not prevent back pain (Reuters via Yahoo! News)
Pre-pregnancy physical activity may not influence whether or not a woman will have persistent low back or pelvic pain after pregnancy, suggest researchers from Sweden.
Read more...Antacid medication in pregnancy may increase childhood asthma (PhysOrg)
(PhysOrg.com) -- Children of mothers who took acid-suppressive drugs during pregnancy had a 1.5 times higher incidence of asthma when compared with children who were not exposed to the drugs in utero, finds a large population-based study by researchers at Children`s Hospital Boston.
Read more...Sex is in men's genes (China Daily)
A UK researcher has a new explanation for how the human race manages to keep a fairly even balance of males and females, despite massive deaths of young males in war and selective abortion of female fetuses in certain parts of the world.
Read more...How to Keep Your Sex Life Sizzling After 50 (ThirdAge)
It's not just our priorities that change as we get older -- so do our needs and desires. After you hit 50, sex may fall from somewhere near the top of your wish list to near the bottom -- somewhere behind a long soak and a nice glass of wine.
Read more...Gene by gene, scientists dig for the triggers (PhysOrg)
James Thomson knew that to send a cell back to its past was no trivial matter. Like generations of biologists, the University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell pioneer had been taught that development was a one-way street; it began with an embryo and finished with all the mature cells that make up the body. Yet in the summer of 2007, Thomson and scientists around the globe were racing to do what ...
Read more...