Why Your Back Hurts

It must be flexible enough to provide a wide range of movements and yet strong enough to protect the spinal cord and the delicate nerve fibers which exit between each vertebrae. Imbalances in the pelvis, problems in the sacroiliac joints, facet fixations, as well as joint restrictions in the mid-back and the neck, can contribute to the process of disc degeneration, weakening the joint and making it susceptible to injury. Back pain can be caused by any combination of sprained ligaments, strained muscles, herniated discs, and pinched nerves, any or all of which can lead to back pain.

Of course your spine could be normal in every way and become injured in a fall, accident, or sports injury. Most back pain is mechanical in nature. Less frequently back pain can also directly result from medical pathology such as kidney stones, infections, blood clots, bone loss (osteoporosis), and others.

Nerve Pain
The possible causes of nerve disorders in the human body number literally hundreds but may be divided roughly into 7 categories as follows:

1. Direct Physical Pressure such as from herniated discs, osteoarthritic changes, spinal stenosis. Often referred to as a "pinched nerve".
2. The toxins of acute Infective Diseases such as diphtheria, shingles, typhoid fever, malaria, scarlet fever, septicemia.
3. Autoimmune Disorders such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, Celiac Disease, Myasthenia Gravis.
4. Central Nervous System Disorders such as Cerebral Palsy (CP), Parkinson's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
5. Metabolic Disease such as diabetes or alcoholism.
6. Nutritional deficiency.

By far the most common of these that result in neck pain radiating into the shoulder, arm, wrist, and hand or lower back pain radiating into the buttock, hip, leg, or foot is direct physical pressure. When a patient suffering from a ''bad back'' receives a diagnosis of ''pinched nerve'' the doctor is referring to direct physical pressure as the cause of the nerve pain.

Pinched Nerve
A pinched nerve occurs when too much pressure is applied for too long to a nerve by surrounding tissues—such as by bones, cartilage, muscles, tendons, ligaments, spinal discs or (rarely) tumor. This physical pressure disrupts the nerve's function causing pain, tingling, numbness or weakness. Too much pressure applied for too long to a nerve along the spine results in much the same sensations.
Of the 7 broad categories resulting in nerve dysfunction only one - direct physical pressure - is properly referred to as a pinched nerve. The most common reasons for the direct physical pressure are as a result of the changes occurring with degenerative disc disease (DDD) and/or degenerative joint disease (DJD). Nerve pain resulting from direct physical pressure is called an entrapment neuropathy because the nerve is trapped or pinched by some structure. This term helps to distinguish them from neuropathies resulting from infection or disease.