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At the age of 70, I consider myself a healthy older adult (not senior, thank you very much!). I take yoga classes, and Tai chi, walk three miles every day. Never had a bit of back pain until last week when I overdid it in the garden. X-rays taken at the orthopedic doctor's office showed disc space narrowing, signs of joint arthritis, and some mild stenosis. Frankly, I was surprised because I thought I was doing better than average. What is the typical spinal condition of people in my age group?
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Spine research has been done on a group of patients already enrolled in the world famous Framingham heart studies. Those individuals live in Framingham, Massachusetts and participate in a lifelong study of health (especially heart health). In the process of being examined, they each have CT scans done to look for blood vessel calcification (hardening and blockage of the arteries). The imaging studies also show the structures of the spine from early age on through adult life.
Advanced imaging of a subgroup within the study (people who reported back pain in the last 12 months) showed a wide range of degenerative changes as described above. Most notable was the high incidence of disc narrowing and spinal joint arthritis observed in two-thirds of the group. The researchers then started analyzing data collected about the patients to see if there were any links between low back pain, age, gender, and body mass index with degenerative structural changes in the spine.
What they found was that only spinal stenosis was significantly associated with low back pain. Disc narrowing, facet (spinal) joint arthritis, changes in the spinal muscle size, and spondylolysis are common but were NOT directly linked with low back pain. There was an association between low-density muscles of the spine (multifidus and erector spinae) and arthritic changes observed in the facet joints. Exactly what that means remains to be determined.
So it sounds like you may be very typical of an adult in the eighth decade of life (ages 70 to 80) and very fortunate, indeed, not to have experienced any back pain up until now. Keep up with the exercise because as every physician knows, exercise is medicine and probably the most powerful prevention tool available to everyone for free.
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