About Back Pain due to Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is the degeneration of the cartilage. The common locations for osteoarthritis are the spine, the hips, knees, hands etc. In the spinal osteoarthritis, the smooth articular cartilage coating the facet joints of the spine get deteriorated gradually. The bones of the joint can't move smoothly over the roughened cartilage. This cause irritation and damage to the bone and may cause you severe back pain.

Why Back Pain?

Spine is one of the most common places for osteoarthritis. The spinal osteoarthritis can sometimes be very painful. You would have to face the back pain that sometimes could be severe. But, usually, there isn't any inflammation in the early stages of osteoarthritis of the spine. In the advanced cases of osteoarthritis of the spine, the bits of cartilage may break off and float around inside the joints. This would cause irritation to the soft tissues and inflammation may result and also you would experience the back pain. Physicians would advice you to go for an x-ray that would help to determine if there are bone spurs or damage to the bones. The damage in the spinal osteoarthritis could be of varying degrees. The mild damages sometimes do not have any symptoms or often come with mild back pain. The advanced degrees of damage may include rubbing of the bones in the joint. But it should be remembered that the amount of back pain would not tell you the exact picture of your damage. Therefore, the proper investigation is very much necessary to determine the amount of damage in the spine.

The most common location for the back pain due to spinal osteoarthritis is the lower back. The lower back carries most of the weight of the body. It is also the area of the body that gets the most of the mechanical stress. Due to the excess stress on the lower back, the back muscle gets strained and it can irritate spinal joints that have already been damaged by osteoarthritis. In case of osteoarthritis in the upper back, the back pain may flare up from slouching.

Symptoms

The symptom of the back pain may come out gradually. It may start with the pain in the morning for the first half hour. The back pain may typically improve during the day and then worsen in the later half of the day or at evening. During this time, many people reduce their daily activities because of this back pain. They think that the daily activities may worsen the back pain. But reducing the daily work, in fact weakens the muscles that support the back and as a result, more stress is placed on the spinal joints.

Treatments

Exercise is the best treatment to cope with the back pain. There are several strengthening exercises that you can do regularly to strengthen your back and abs. Strong muscles absorb shock before it reaches the joints of the spine and hence help to support the spine. Stretching exercises decrease the stiffness and help to ease the back pain. Low-impact aerobics such as walking, swimming, or using an exercise bike could help you to increase the blood circulation in your body and it would also decrease the stiffness.