5 Common Myths of Back Pain: Unraveling the Truth for a Pain-Free Life

The misconception that resting indefinitely is the solution to back pain is counterproductive. Inactivity can impede healing. Now we should avoid movements that take your pain to an extreme level until we are guided on how to improve these movements. BUT stopping all activity will limit your body’s ability to heal on its own. Our body, our muscles and cells need blow flow and oxygen to heal. We need circulation to our tissues around our spine that happens when we move. Even gentle exercise can drastically accelerate your healing when doing the correct ones for YOUR body.

As we age, injuries accumulate, and our bodies take longer to recover. Seeking expert guidance, like that from a skilled physical therapist, can accelerate healing through tailored exercises for you. We need to be shown the best exercises, movements, and ways that our body can heal and accelerate recovery from back pain, which is what physical therapists specialize in.

Surgery should be the last resort. However, we live in a society of instant gratification where we can get things at the drop of a hat. We don’t even have to walk into stores to get our shopping done, we can pick it up OR have it delivered to our doorstep while we are busy doing other things. Surgery can seem like a quick option that you will be put to sleep, a surgeon will do some great work on your back and you intent to wake up feeling incredibly better than before. Unfortunately, that is not always the case for people when they chose the route of back surgery. This can be a slippery slope of one surgery leading to many as the root cause is not fixed.

There is a time and place for everything in terms of surgery occasionally being necessary. Explore conservative treatments first though, as surgery often involves risks and may not guarantee a pain-free outcome. Committing to alternative solutions can lead to substantial benefits without the need for surgical intervention. You will also then learn how to take care of your body when working with a physical therapist no matter what path you head down for healing.

Injections provide short-term relief and can be thought of as a band aide. They will mask your symptoms, but not solve your problems in the long run. Injections do not address the root cause of back pain.

At the root of back pain, muscles must be reminded how and when to contract to support our back, joints along our spine need to be more mobile and our alignment must be optimal to support our body when we move. Long-term relief involves addressing all these factors and more when working with a skilled physical therapist.

One of the most difficult things to understand is why our back pain started in the first place when we didn’t have a major event that we can point to. An injury, a fall, a car accident, or other events can be a clear catalyst for back pain. But what is harder to decipher are the small things that happen each day that are contributing to your back pain and will prevent it from healing fully. Consulting with a physical therapist to help you uncover all those small changes that you can make in your life to help your back pain is the best comprehensive approach to healing.

MRIs are an image of you lying down on your back, which for some people does not even hurt their body being in this position. Our spine starts to break down at the young age of 23 as we are not meant to live forever. Meaning it is normal to see some degenerative changes on imaging, but those changes are not always the cause of your back pain.

MRI images may reveal issues, but not all abnormalities correlate with pain. Many people with perfect-looking spines on MRI suffer from chronic pain, while others with abnormalities experience no pain. Understanding the limited correlation between symptoms and MRI findings is crucial for effective treatment.