Back pain is something that afflicts many different people. It is important to understand how the back works so that you will be able to understand why you are experiencing pain.
Back pain is a common affliction experienced by many different people at different times in their lives. There are many different causes of this pain, but they are all centered on the main component of the back which is the spine.
The spine is made of many bones that are stacked on top of each other. You can feel these bones when you feel the center of your back.
Each bone piece is called vertebrae. There are 24 vertebrae with nine other bones that make up the spine.
One main group found in the spine is called the sacrum. The sacrum is made of give vertebrae that are fused together.
In addition, the tailbone and coccyx are also considered to be parts of your back. The coccyx is made up of four vertebrae that are also fused together.
The part of the spine where individual vertebrae are stacked on top of each other begins at about the point of your belly button and they stack up to support your head. Normally, these bones are quite strong and dense, but they will often deteriorate with age causing pain.
The strength of the vertebrae is dependent on getting enough calcium and phosphate. Exercise can also help keep these bones strong and functioning properly.
When you put extra weight, but not too much, on your bones, they will become stronger and remain dense to keep up with the activity. One illness that afflicts many women and which contributes to the deterioration of this structure is osteoporosis.
Fortunately, the only things that can actually break these bones are disease or impact. There are four main regions of the spine and they are the cervical region, the thoracic region, the lumbar region, and the sacral region.
All of these regions must function together in order to support your body properly. The spinal cord is protected by these regions as it passes through a tunnel that continues throughout the four regions.
In addition to protecting the spinal cord and providing support to your upper body, these regions must work together to allow your bend, twist, rotate and move in various ways. As the bones cannot be bent or twisted, there is another component of the spine that you should be aware of.
There are special disks referred to as facet joints or intervertebral disks that are flexible and which allow you to move in all of the ways that you can. They are placed between each vertebra.
Nerves branch out in the spaces between vertebrae from the spinal cord to various parts of your body so that pain can be relayed to your brain. The intervertebral disks are made out of cartilage, the same substance that makes up most of your nose.
The disks are made out of rings of cartilage with a thick liquid in the middle. As the cartilage can bend, it is responsible for absorbing a lot of the shock that your back feels when you move around.
When these disks are functioning properly, you should not feel any pain. However, when they are not functioning properly even the simplest of activities can cause pain.
Damage dealt to the cartilage rings which allow the liquid escape so that it cannot cushion the impact as much is the number one cause of back pain and it is called having a slipped disk. There are a variety of things that go wrong with the disks and they all lead to differing amounts of pain and discomfort.
When there are only a few layers holding the liquid in, it is known as a bulging disk. The bulging disk or slipped disk can put a lot or pressure on the nearby nerves and spinal cord, which can be painful.
Another thing that some people experience is called degenerative disk disease. It usually takes many years for this disease to fully develop.
However, this condition causes one or even several of the facet joints to dry out. As a result, the liquid will not be there cushion the impact and the bones may feel like they are grinding together.
At age twenty, most people's facet joints contain 70 percent water. However, this percentage naturally decreases over time as a person ages.
In addition, the daily wear tends to cause the facet joint to lose height which allows the bones to be closer together. This means that what is left of the disk has to take more of the impact, which can cause even faster degeneration and even more pain when the nerves are pinched.
Author Resource:-
Tom Selwick has worked in the field of chiropractics for 15 years and has written numerous articles on chiropractic therapy for treatment of automobile accident injuries. He recommends Utah Car Accident for treatment of your automobile accident injury.
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