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The Foundations of Back Pain
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Posted on: 03/22/2001
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Back pain: common, often recurring, difficult to treat. Medical science continues to search for clues about how to predict who will develop chronic back problems later in life.
These authors tried to find predictors for back pain by looking back twenty years. They followed up on more than 6000 Swedish men who had enlisted for the military at age 18, in 1979 and 1980. At that time the men had gotten physical exams and answered questions about their health habits, type of work, and back condition. By the time they were nearly 40 years old, they filled out a questionnaire with the same types of questions.
The authors found that the men who currently had back, neck, or shoulder problems were much more likely to have done heavy work at age 18. They were also more likely to have had everyday back pain when they were younger. Being overweight also related to back pain. So did smoking. The 18-year-olds who smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day were more likely to have back pain in middle age.
This study may not have provided doctors with a clear blueprint of how to predict chronic back pain. But it does suggest that heavy labor, being overweight, and smoking, even at young ages, can lay the foundations for lifelong back problems.
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References:
Anna-Lisa Hellsing, MMed, MSc, and Ing-Liss Bryngelsson. Predictors of Musculoskeletal Pain in Men: A Twenty-Year Follow-Up From Examination at Enlistment. In Spine. December 1, 2000. Vol. 35. No. 23. Pp. 3080-3086.
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