First thing we should point out is that back pain is not a specific disease. It’s really a symptom that can occur from many different processes.

You see, your back is a well-designed structure made up of bone, muscles, nerves and other soft tissues. Your back bears most of the weight and stress of your body. So, it shouldn’t surprise you that your back is involved in essentially every movement you make, and is therefore considered the “workhorse” of the body. As a result, your back is vulnerable to injury and pain.

In order to better understand the cause of your pain, we will divide low back pain into two categories here: Mechanical and Neurogenic.

Mechanical Pain:

Mechanical back pain is caused by “wear and tear” on your lumbar spine. This process is called degeneration, which can weaken your spine and its supporting structures and for that reason can increase the risk of low back injury. Mechanical pain typically gets worse after activity because of the strain on the moving parts of the spine during the activity. Mechanical pain is usually felt in the back, but it can spread into your buttocks, hips, and thighs. The pain rarely spreads below the knee. Mechanical back pain usually does not cause weakness or numbness in the lower extremity (i.e., leg or foot).

Neurogenic Pain:

Now let’s move on to Neurogenic pain, which basically means pain from nerve injury. Nerve injury occurs when your spinal nerves become inflamed, stretched, or pinched. This can happen when a disc herniates (or bulges) between two lumbar vertebrae, or when a nerve gets pinched where somewhere in the spine.

Pressure on a nerve shoots pain throughout the areas where the nerve travels, not necessarily in the low back. For example, your back may not hurt, yet you feel pain, numbness, or weakness in the leg and/or foot. When there is a problem with nerve conduction (your body’s electrical wiring), muscles weaken, reflexes dull, and paraesthesia (numbness and tingling, pins and needles) is felt where the nerve travels.