When Acute Back Pain Strikes

It doesn’t take a charged event like an auto accident, a sports injury, or a fall on the stairs to bring on acute back pain and trouble. Sometimes merely bending over to tie one’s shoelaces will do the trick — or lifting a bag of groceries from the car — or picking the baby up to give her a hug —or countless other simple, innocent human activities, any of which can trigger back pain in an instant.

And it happens all the time. Back pain hits individual Americans by the thousands every day — seemingly at random like a roll of the dice —compromising health, sapping vitality, even wrecking careers… not caring who it brings down. The company president and the office boy are fair game alike.

SOME WARNING USUALLY GIVEN
But does back pain really strike at random? Chiropractic doctors say no, back pain seldom strikes without notice. Most of the time, these back experts say, the body sends ever so many early warning signals that back trouble is on the way. Too often though, the very person who should be paying the most attention ignores these subtle signals of impending back misery and —the next thing you know —that person falls prey to back pain.

JUST LOOKS RANDOM
Sudden back pain just looks like random chance, chiropractors emphasize. With few exceptions they say, back pains instigated by everyday movements are almost always triggered by chronic spinal weaknesses, imbalances, fixations, genetic imperfections, subluxations, or any of a variety of other biomechanical problems related to spinal bones, ligaments, discs and muscles. In such cases, pain produced by merely bending over to tie one’s shoelaces is like the straw that broke the camel’s back: one tiny exertion too many.