What is Back Muscle Pain?
Back muscle pain or its aliases: pulled back muscle, back muscle spasm, torn back muscle or back muscle strain, is very common. Back muscle pain is the most common source of back pain. The good news is that it is also one of the quickest to heal and rehabilitate.
What Causes Back Muscle Pain?
Most causes of low back pain are muscle, ligament or joint-related. Commonly, these muscular strains, ligament sprains, and joint dysfunction arises suddenly during or following physical loading of your spine. Muscle fatigue, excessive loads, high speeds or poor lifting postures are the most common causes.
The causes of pure back pain are numerous but roughly fall into the following categories.
Back Muscle Strains
Muscle pain is the most common source of back pain. Muscle fatigue, excessive loads or poor lifting or sitting postures are the most common problems.
Inefficient, weak, or back muscles that lack endurance or expected contraction timing could lead to reduced joint stabilisation and subsequent injury to your back muscles, ligaments, joints or even spinal discs.
Poor Posture
Poor posture when sitting, standing and lifting at work can place unnecessary stress upon your spine. With muscle fatigue or overstretching, your ligaments and discs can stretch, which puts spinal joint muscles and nerves under pain-causing pressure or strain, resulting in back pain.
Ligament Sprains
Ligaments are the durable, fibrous bands that limit the amount of movement available at each spinal level. Stretching ligaments too far or too quickly will tear them with subsequent bleeding into the surrounding tissues, causing swelling, muscular spasm and pain.
Awkward lifting, sports injuries and motor vehicle accidents are prevalent causes. Just as in other regions of the body, physiotherapy hastens ligament healing and relieves pain so that you can enjoy life again as soon as possible.
What are the Symptoms of Back Muscle Pain?
Back muscle pain symptoms may range from a mild ache to sudden debilitating back pain.
Typical back muscle pain symptoms include:
- Localised back pain, with no radiation into your buttock or leg.
- Back muscle tenderness and spasms.
- Protective back stiffness.
- Sudden back pain onset.
You will usually feel better when resting and may find a change of position painful, e.g. sit to stand, rolling in bed, walking or bending.
How is Back Muscle Pain Diagnosed?
Differentiating a back muscle strain from a ligament sprain can be difficult, as both injuries show similar symptoms. In general, it doesn’t significantly matter what you call the problem because the treatment and prognosis for both back muscular strains and ligament sprains are similar. Most spinal practitioners refer to both injuries as a category called a “Back Strain” or “Musculoligamentous Strain”.
X-rays and CT scans do not identify muscle or ligament injury. MRI scan is probably the best diagnostic test to determine the muscle or ligament structures injured.
What is Back Muscle Pain Treatment?
Seek a Professional Diagnosis!
A spinal healthcare practitioner, such as your physiotherapist, should thoroughly; examine you to exclude more severe sources of back pain.
Numerous injuries can cause back pain, and the treatment does vary significantly depending on your diagnosis. Physiotherapy treatment aims to protect your damaged tissue while hastening your muscle and ligament healing and then look at strategies to prevent a recurrence.
Your physiotherapist has some nifty tricks for quickly relieving your back pain so that you can enjoy life again as soon as possible.
