Get control of chronic back pain with a full spectrum of therapy options, experts say
CBC
Ann Marie Gaudon was at the gym when she injured her back. After bending down to lift something off the ground, she experienced a ripping feeling rush through her body.
"The air was sucked out of my lungs," said Gaudon, an Ontario psychotherapist and social worker. "I couldn't breathe, I couldn't stand up. I didn't know what was going on, but I knew it was serious."
Gaudon spent years speaking with chiropractors, massage therapists and pain experts, finally finding a specialist who helped her recover.
But she was pain-free for a only a few years before the her back pain returned. Gaudon says she has less pain now than she did when she first hurt her back in 2017, but still deals with discomfort on a daily basis.
Gaudon is one of the nearly eight million Canadians who live with chronic pain, and one of the hundreds of millions of people around the world with chronic back pain.
According to pain specialist Dr. Brenda Lau, co-founder and medical director of the CHANGEPain clinic in Burnaby, B.C., pain can be acute — caused by injuries, stress or disease — or chronic. Pain is typically classified as chronic after three to six months.
The persistent discomfort associated with chronic back pain affects men and women relatively equally, with most people experiencing chronic back pain between the ages of 25 and 55.
"Typically, it's someone who's actually been doing a lot of sitting around," Lau told The Dose host Dr. Brian Goldman.
Smoking, poor eating habits and poor sleep habits also contribute to chronic back pain, Lau added.
When Gaudon first hurt herself, medical imaging revealed a herniated disc, a disc bulge and three areas with pinched nerves.
While Gaudon had physically traumatized her back, Lau says many people living with chronic back pain often have nothing physically wrong with their bodies.
"We also know the imaging, MRI, CT scans, X-rays, whatever you see there, they don't correlate to the intensity," Lau told The Dose host Dr. Brian Goldman.
Instead, Lau says, medical images done on people with back pain can look a lot like images of people without.
The term non-specific low back pain can often be applied in circumstances where there is back discomfort, but the reason isn't clear.
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