What are the causes of back pain?
The causes of back pain can be many and varied. Therefore, from the beginning it is important to establish a good clinical history of each patient because in this way we can establish some hypotheses, that is to say, to suppose what may have happened in that person’s life. Equally relevant is to take into account any trauma, major blows, traffic accidents or serious accidents suffered by that person, his or her surgical interventions; as well as possible situations that may be linked to his or her work activity, repetitive work or any damage that may have been suffered by that person at a given moment. Beyond all this, it is also necessary to take into account the physical activity that the person performs, his or her diet, the effects of any dysfunction of any organ or viscera that may cause pain to the spine and, finally, the degree of stress that the person may suffer.
How is back pain treated?
Back pain has several treatments. There are surgical treatments or outpatient interventions such as, for example, working with some type of infiltration. It can also be treated in many other ways, from physiotherapy to Pilates exercises to re-educate posture. Although this type of local physiotherapeutic work is recommended from our osteopathic point of view, we always take into account, apart from the patient’s clinical history, a global concept of the patient’s body, not only of its structure but also of situations that may aggravate back pain.
How can back pain be prevented?
The best way to prevent back pain is to apply simple solutions to our lives. The most important thing is to do a good physical activity that is pleasurable. The body is designed for movement and our daily life, due to the type of sedentary jobs or fixed postures that we often have, lacks that lack of mobility that in the end takes its toll on us. It is also very important to try to reduce our stress levels to a minimum and to have a balanced and healthy diet. It is necessary to check what we eat because in many occasions it inflames us and can give us certain problems related to back pain.
How does osteopathy influence back pain?
What osteopathy does is to establish a good clinical history of the patient and then make a good hypothesis. Trying to find out or presuppose why that person may suffer back pain. From there, every osteopath looks for what does not move well in the body. We do not look only where it bothers, but we look for why the discomfort appears in that place. That is to say, we perform a general analysis of the patient’s posture apart from the previous exploration that has been done with the interview and we try to balance all the areas that do not have a good movement in the body with the idea that everything has a good mobility and the symptomatology improves. The work is done exclusively with the hands, although the osteopath addresses not only the muscular and skeletal tissue, but we also work on ligaments, viscera, mobility systems, which may be influencing our posture in an important way.