Do You Have Persistent Low-Back Pain?

Back pain is one of the frequently seen problems in the clinics. In the UK alone, an estimated statistics suggests that 8 in every 10 individuals would have suffered from back pain at least once in their lifetime. Low back pain which involves the area at the back between the lower-end of ribcage to the upper legs is called lumbago. In the literature, it is documented that around 80% of the times, the cause of low back pain is benign and is due to mechanical reasons. In majority of the patients, the low back pain may resolve in a few weeks without any intervention required. However, another group may persistently experience low back ache with or without trial of therapy.

Mechanical causes of low back pain may range from faulty or prolonged standing, slouching while sitting, bending or work involving repetitive bending position, lifting weight, long hauling driving. Low back pain doesn’t spare any profession or age. It has been experienced by a house-making woman, office worker, athlete, laborer, surgeon, shopkeeper, vender in a street.

Feet as a Cause of Low-Back Pain

Although there are numerous causes of low back pain, misalignment of foot is one of the inevitable causes of low-back pain. The importance of knowing low back pain particularly caused by the foot problem lays in the fact that it leads to persistent pain unaffected by the conventional mode of treatment, whether it be exercises, physiotherapy or pharmacological treatment. The reason being, the imbalance and improper dispersion of weight and stress on the low back spine and muscles would not be relieved until and unless the miss-aligned foot is corrected.

Our musculo-skeletal structure is designed in a way that the weight of the body is transmitted from the spine through to the legs to feet and vice versa. This stress is evenly distributed while a proper standing posture is assumed and while walking normally. However, if there is any sort of poor alignment in either of the feet, the stress in unevenly distributed putting more wear and shear on the back. When this happens repetitively in a chain manner over time, it leads to sprain, stiffness and inflammation of the muscles involved in dealing with more stress.

How Foot Orthotics help in Low back pain

Faulty alignment of the foot can be diagnosed with static and dynamic foot pressure analysis. This involves detailed clinical examination of the musculo-skeletal system, joints, range of movements and postural stability by the experienced podiatrist and then carrying out the pressure measurements and gait analysis with the help of technology based scanning, mapping or video tapping.

Once the analysis has been done, it will pin point to the fault in the alignment of the foot balance. Therefore, custom made foot orthotics, fully personalized and designed to the particular problem would help in maintaining the balance and keeping the proper posture with balanced transmission of weight correcting the cause and thus relieving the pain over time. Thus by correcting the alignment, it will correct every aspect of posture and in turn gait, called as kinetic chain.

Bottom line is that the diagnosis and consequent treatment of the underlying cause is imperative in getting rid of persistent low back pain. If you have persistent low back pain, you really need to go through pressure analysis for diagnosis and proper treatment.