More than likely if you are reading this you are or have suffered from acute or chronic back pain. Back pain is a very common complaint affecting upwards of 80% of the population at one point or another during their lives. The good news about acute back pain is that most people get better even without medical intervention in a few weeks to months. On the flip side, the pain can often times become intermittent with each episodes lasting a few weeks and occurring randomly over a period of many years. Chronic back pain on the other hand, frequently does not get better without some type of medical care whether that being medication, spine injections, physical therapy, regular exercise or surgery.

The term, degenerative disc disease is slightly inaccurate because it is technically not a disease, nor is it strictly degenerative. It is not considered a disease because degenerative changes in the spine are natural and common.

The chronic pain syndrome is a complex medical problem that needs to be treated with a multi pronged approach. For example, individuals with chronic sciatica, chronic low back pain or chronic neck and shoulder pain not only have physical impairments due to the deconditioning process but they also typically have a significant fear of movement and fear of re-injury that affects their ability to overcome their chronic pain syndrome.

If you are over 30 years of age and have gone into your doctor and complained of back pain more than likely an X-ray was done. If your pain was bad enough and not letting up odds are that you had an MRI of your spine. You were probably told that you had degenerative disc disease or possibly a disc bulge that was causing your pain.

Among child and adolescent athletes, spondylolysis typically represents a fracture of the posterior arch (back part of the spine) in the lower lumbar spine due to overuse and is a relatively common cause of low back pain.

Chronic pain syndromes are influenced by many factors beyond the original tissue damage. After several months of pain, individuals develop secondary problems that for many people become a bigger barrier to recovery than the original injury. For example, chronic pain sufferers develop significant loss of physical conditioning from a combination of reduced activity and the fear of causing further harm to themselves.