When it comes to bodily pain, there are few things worse than a deep pain located right in your lower back. It can be beyond annoying, meaning that is genuinely disrupts your day and disallows you from taking advantage of tasks you could be performing throughout the day. There are even occasions where lower back pain can lay you out for the entirety of the day, meaning there's nothing you'll be able to accomplish. Lower back pain can be described as falling under one of two categories: acute lower back pain and chronic lower back pain. The following article will give you a brief description of both, as well as how both forms are generally treated.

What Is Acute Back Pain?

Acute back pain essentially refers to the lower back pain that is temporary or short term in nature. Acute back pain is usually the result of a specific, low impact injury, and although it can be quite painful, is usually easily treated and can have you back in the running of the rat race of life in no time flat.

Acute back pain in the lower back is almost always mechanical in nature, which means that there is usually a disruption in the causal schema of your back. This means that there is usually something jostled loose in your lower back. This can be part of your spine, muscle, or nerve; basically, anything that causes the back to not function in the way that it is supposed to. Sprains and strains make up the majority of acute lower back pain. Pulling a muscle can be quite painful, despite the ease of its treatment.

What Is Chronic Back Pain?

Unlike acute back pain, chronic back pain refers to any lower back pain that is persistent. Although there is not an adequate medical definition of the time a pain must persist before it can be labeled chronic, a general guideline for chronic pain is pain that lasts 3 months or beyond.

Chronic and acute back pain should, in many ways, not be labeled as two separate categories. About 2-8% of those that suffer from an acute lower back pain will see this pain grow into a chronic pain. Although most people who experience treatment for acute lower back pain will not see this pain grow into chronic pain, there are many people who, despite the treatment, continue to experience chronic back pain.

Chronic lower back pain is becoming a much more common diagnosis in this day and age due to poor posture habits, such as slouching, as well as an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.

Treating and Caring For Your Lower Back

Treating lower back pain differs according to the type of pain; whether it is chronic or acute. Generally, surgery is not recommended for lower back pain, unless it so happens that there is either nerve damage or the potential for nerve damage unless you receive the surgery.

Hot or cold packs tend to numb the area as well as constrict the muscles, which can be very good in some cases and has been proven to be effective in both chronic and acute lower back pain cases. Likewise, activity tends to be very good for back pain, especially for acute cases. In cases where you have suffered either a strain or a sprain, activity can loosen the muscle and eventually restore its strength.

Visiting the chiropractor to have your spine worked on and aligned also serves to help alleviate lower back pain, though you should be proactive with the previous mentioned methods of pain treatment alongside visits to the chiropractor.

Both acute and chronic back pain are two painful phenomena that are not to be taken lightly. Although generally easily treatable, both forms of back pain can develop into serious issues if not taken seriously and treated with the utmost of care.