Low Back Pain

What is Lower Back Pain?
Lower back pain can be either an acute (sudden and short term) or chronic (long-term and often getting progressively worse) disabling condition that affects many people at some stage in their life. Lower back pain can also be described as a symptom of many other conditions.

What Causes Lower Back Pain?
It can be caused by an injury or a form of trauma, like a sports injury, a car accident or a fall, which although seemingly unlinked, can be the cause of many problems or abnormalities in the lower back that result in pain.

Poor posture can be another cause, as can emotional stress, obesity, age and poor body mechanics such as lifting without bending the knees.

Lower back pain can be the result of damage to the soft tissue like muscles, ligaments and tendons due to an accident of some sort. Other causes can be particular conditions such as osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and degeneration of the discs between the vertebrae or cancer.

In summary, the possible causes of lower back pain can be categorised as mechanical, inflammatory, due to tumours, metabolic, referred pain from elsewhere, or can even be caused by depression.

Physiotherapy treatments
Postural advice and adaptations
Exercise programmes
Mobilisations & Manipulations
Trigger point therapy
Acupuncture
Massage
Ultrasound