How do I know if my back pain is serious?

So, how do you know if your back pain is serious? You know, when you have ever experienced really severe back pain, you can feel really concerned and really worrying and actually think my goodness, what have I done? What does this mean? Will it ever go away? Does it mean something more sinister than just normal back pain? And there's no such thing as normal back pain. And you know, I see, I hear this question a lot. I see patients when they first come to visit us at the clinic here and they go you know, the pain's just like, not even 10 outta 10, they're like saying 20 outta 10, 30 outta 10. So if the scale and they get really worried. And so the way that we know whether it's serious or not is first of all, when we go through four case history, we're determining what's called red flags.

So clinically we're looking at things that are a little bit more sinister, things that could be related to other parts of their body, things that would be non cullet. But also things that might be a bit more concerning that might need further investigations. So that's one way of telling. Secondly, there is not really a good correlation between severity of pain and severity of the condition. So symptoms are not great indicator of how bad a condition is or how serious a condition is. So you know, that some, some ways is better not to be fooled by that. What I would suggest is definitely seeking professional help, but other con other things that we look for a red flag, just like, what are the associated symptoms for it? So if your back pain changes, according to your position, thinking of about things, aggravate your pain.

So is it certain movements? So is it certain specific movement? Is it certain activities? Does it start at a certain time of day? Does it change by certainly body movements? Body functions? Does it change according to what you eat the change, according to how lie down things of that nature. So those are kind of big clues that when you come along to us to have your first initial consultation, to have it investigated, we're looking for those sort of clues as to what's going on there. The other thing is, is to look at what medications you're taking as well. Sometimes you can have side effects of medications that can be quite severe. And so that's worth, first of all, reading the leaflet inside. Secondly, speaking to your prescriber about, is this a normal response, or when I say normal response, is that a, a common response?

The other thing is actually that releasing on to commonality. So often people say to me, oh, you know, I'm sure you see back pain here all the time. And I'm sure that that's a common thing just because that pain is common, doesn't make it normal. And that's true for a lot of things just because it's common, doesn't make it normal. That's really important that we appreciate that because what happens is with otherwise get into this mindset that, oh yeah, I can live with it. And actually we're not designed to live with pain pains, a really important indicators not to ignore because that's a sign of something else going on underneath that's worth investigating. But before you go seek any professional advice what I would always like my patients to have done is not only thought about what things are making it worse, making it better thinking about what's caused in the past.

Have they had a history of this in the past? Is it recurrence? This is the first time. And also thinking about you know, what, what is it stopping them from doing in their daily activities? What is it like to be able to do again? Cause that really gives a good indication on where they are with it and how it's going to affect them going forward. So I hope this is useful to you. If you have any questions, please do leave me a comment in the, in a comment section, please do reach out to me. I'd be more than happy to ask any questions or across any of my socials to you. And otherwise I hope you have a PainFREE but a health.