I Had Back Pain and then it went away..... UH OH!

One very important part of my job is making sure that I take a detailed case history of every client I see the first time I see them. During this, all manner of old issues, injuries or complaints are mentioned. 

A classic example of this is a gentleman I saw last week who had worked in the building trade when he was younger, lifting lots of heavy objects and spending a considerable amount of time hunched over. He stated ‘yeah I pulled my back a couple of times which caused me some lower back pain for a few days, and one time that kept me off work for a week but after that it was fine and I cracked on’. He did not seek help for it at the time and just pushed through as the back pain died down, believing it had fully resolved itself.

Yet here he was, with lower back pain in the same place 15 years down the line for seemingly no reason at all. 

Now sure, I’d be silly to think it was the exact same injury to the exact same tissue still not changing 15 years down the line, but I’d be equally silly if I didn’t think they were related at all. The amount of compensation your body does in order to help repair damage, especially when being used at an intense level just a week after the issue started, is massive. Even if it were the lowest grade muscle tear, we’re still looking at multiple weeks until the muscle can start functioning anywhere near where it did before, and that’s unlikely to give you enough grief to make you bed bound/off work in pain for a full week.

When I questioned him further he actually revealed that he gets little ‘manageable’ flare ups a couple of times a year. So now we start to unpack the bigger picture. It’s not just two episodes of back pain 15 years apart… Theres something more to it. And he hadn't even realised!

The issue is, once you start having to use your body in a certain way it starts to form habits. These habits protect your injury in place usually by putting the stress somewhere else. Over a short period that’s fine but if you have these habits for months/years it starts to become very taxing. Failures begin to happen elsewhere and all of a sudden there are multiple layers to this.

So really, did his issue ever really go away? Likely not. It just compounded into more and more dysfunction until one day, 15 years down the road, his body said ‘enough is enough’. Instead of a few weeks of rest, rehab and solid acute injury advice, his entire nervous system is now out of whack and it will be having a negative effect on more than just his lower back.

If you’re reading this and thinking this sounds familiar, come get checked out. The worst that can happen is you waste an hour and half of your time right? If you’re still not sure, here’s a tip. Start documenting when you’re in discomfort. Document the area, the length and especially document what it stops you from doing. Once you start seeing these things right in front of you you soon realise you’re probably living in a state of comfortable numbness instead of living your life.