Is Back Pain Genetic?

QUESTION FROM CALLER: My grandfather and my father both had chronic back pain, lower back pain. I seemed to have gotten that same gene. I do not know if it is genetic. I have a back spasm every month, what is the best approach to excise this from my life am I going to have this for the rest of my life?

Dr. Darrow: That is one of the greatest questions I have ever been asked. Genetically there are no studies that I know of that can correlate genetics and back pain. However, there can be sort of a structural genetic thing in the low back that can cause a lot of back pain. The arch in the lower back (can be severe) in a sense and that can cause pressure on the discs that can cause back pain and possibly disc herniation. Now this is theoretical as I say I have never done studies on it, but I have noticed that a lot of people that have this arch problem do have a lot of back pain. That particular part of the back where the arch is, right above the buttocks carries the most strain between the upper body and the lower body. More than 80% of the people on the planet have back pain at some point in their life and the fact that your grandfather has it, your father has it and you have pain episodically can just be that the fact that we are standing up when we are probably built to be on all fours and that extra stress from standing and putting the stress on the lumbar sacral area just causes a lot of back pain.

When you ask me what is the best way to prevent these back pain episodes that you have, the triad of healing in my office is chiropractor to align the spine and then MedX treatment which are big frame machines that were established by Arthur Jones who built Nautilus equipment. And these are big machines designed to exercise only the muscles that support the vertebrae, the paraspinal muscles. And most people have very weak paraspinal muscles, they can have very strong backs because their gluteus and hamstring muscles are very strong, these paraspinal muscles are weak. If we can strengthen these muscles up, they can save you from these spasms. Prolotherapy, the stimulation of the body to produce more collagen to strengthen the ligaments of the back. The low back especially is filled with the ligamentous type tissues.

We use a (multi-disciplinary approach in these problems) I do not know of another clinic in the world that does what we do or have the success that we have. The chances are that if you get the back good and strong and the muscles and ligaments strong this can help your problem.