In the UK, 49% of the population will experience back pain for more than 24-hours each year.
7% of these people will develop chronic back pain, which costs UK employers £600 million per year with nearly 5 million work days are lost annually.
Treating back pain costs £1.6 billion in health care per year in the UK.
What is interesting is that 85% of all pain conditions are idiopathic in nature, which means there is no known cause. So if you woke up one day and had back pain and there is no obvious cause, such as a car accident or collision on the sporting field, that would be considered idiopathic.
So what caused the pain?
There are two main reasons why injuries have no obvious cause.
The first reason is that cumulative micro-trauma occurs to tissues in the body over time. Day after day, trauma occurs to the tissues until one day, the straw finally breaks the camel’s back and the pain appears out of nowhere.
The second reason is that the healing process slows down and becomes slower than the rate at which the body’s tissues are being broken down.
So tune in next time when I’ll explain what causes micro trauma in the lumbar discs…