Back pain can affect people of all ages, and it’s one of the most common reasons have to take a day off and miss work. It’s so common that 9 out of 10 patients that we treat at Pain Away Clinic have symptoms related to it. In fact, according to an alarming study by the UNC School of Medicine, almost 80% of the population experience an episode of back pain once in their life. It’s not only painful, but often times inconvenient as it can easily interfere with your daily activities, as well as working performance.
In fact, according to an alarming study by the UNC School of Medicine, almost 80% of the population experience an episode of back pain once in their life.
Fortunately, if the pain is only mild, you can seek pain relief from home by adopting better habits (such as correcting bad posture – a common cause for pain), while stretching and exercising your back to help it recover and strengthen up. If the pain is noticeably affecting your quality of life, then it may be time to seek a professional.
At our clinic, we have special equipment that allow us to help assess irregularities that may occur in your spine, as well as licensed physiotherapists trained to use it. We’ve found our Posture Report helps a lot as our patients are able to understand through the visual aid any issues with their back and spine, where other methods fail.
Here is an example of our Posture Report (click on the image to zoom):
Affected Regions/Areas
We categorize pain into these three main areas:
- Upper back pain
- Middle back pain
- Lower back pain
Simply identifying the area or region where the symptoms occur on your back already help considerably in identifying the possible causes for your pain.
Common Back Pain Symptoms
We regularly see new patients with severe symptoms. For some, they have simply neglected the pain for too long. In other cases, however, treatment elsewhere has not been successful in identifying and treating both the cause and symptoms. This is an issue especially for foreigners in Bangkok, where there is sometimes a communication barrier between patient and therapist.
A lack of proper communication often leads to miscommunication, and the patient ends up with a therapy session where only the symptom is treated, but not the cause.
- Nagging pain
- Sharp shooting or stabbing pain
- Pain radiates to the buttocks and legs
- Pain gets worse while being seated or standing for long periods
- Pain gets worse while lifting heavy objects
- Reduced mobility and flexibility
- Stiffness of the muscles in the back
- Sensory disturbances in the legs
- Loss of strength in the legs
If the back pain occurs for less than 6 weeks we can classify it as acute. We consider it to be chronic when the symptoms are persistent for more than 12 weeks in recurrent periods.
Common Back Pain Causes
Back pain can be caused by multiple factors and also differs per person and their lifestyle. Some well-known factors that cause pain in the back are: spit, hernia, sciatica, wear and tear, postural syndrome, and instability. There are also other factors that can cause problems such as a wrong posture, heavy physical work, one-sided work, overload, stress, old age, or an accident or trauma.
While we’re on the subject, here is a great video by Upright Health that goes into detail on how you can identify what’s causing the pain:
Symptoms of back pain are usually caused by poor or abnormal posture, sudden bending or twisting, excessive load on the muscles, and incorrect lifting techniques.
Nowadays, we tend to move less and often use our backs unilaterally (like how you might be carrying your bag everyday on one shoulder, causing an imbalance in the spine). Because of these types of imbalances, the body may try to avoid painful position, which may activate different surrounding muscles in ways they aren’t supposed to be, resulting in stress or pain in other parts of the body. This is often why back pain often leads to pain in other muscles in the surrounding area.
Back Pain Treatment in Bangkok
To prevent complications from getting worse, it is essential to have a physician take a look at your back. At Pain Away Clinic we have licensed physicians who are experienced in treating all types of pains and bodily ailments. During your first visit, we conduct an extensive examination to identify the cause of your pain and offer you visual aid so that you can understand as well. After this, the physician draws up a personal treatment plan and will follow up during your recovery to achieve the best treatment results. When the treatment has finished, we will also follow-up to debrief you, giving you advice on things you can do and habits you need to change so that the issue doesn’t occur again in the future.
Pain Away Clinic is amongst the leading clinics and has the best knowledge and technology available in Bangkok. Back pain and posture adjustment is what we specialize in and we have hundreds of patients every week coming in to get treated for it. You can read some of their success stories here. We are more than happy to give you a quick consultation if you have any questions or are looking to get a professional opinion.
If you or one of your loved ones are experiencing pain, feel free to reach out to us, or come on down to our clinic at Asoke, Bangkok so that we can help get you a proper diagnosis and find an effective treatment plan to speed up your recovery.
