Low Back Pain: Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

Low Back Pain (LBP) is a sudden and severe back pain in the lumbar spine. We explain how it comes about and what helps.

What’s Low Back Pain?

Lumbago (also low back pain) describes very severe back pain that occurs suddenly and is usually stabbing. The area of the lumbar spine is affected. Since the patient usually adopts a relieving posture in which he leans forward due to the pain, it is also called “lumbago”. Usually the back pain disappears on its own after a few days, but a lumbago can also become chronic and thus cause permanent pain.

What Causes can Low Back Pain Have?

Often an unfavorable or abrupt movement is enough to cause sudden back pain due to a spinal blockage. The joints of the spinal column get caught in each other or two vertebrae that are moving in opposite directions become blocked. Due to the many nerves and nerve fibres at the joints, such a blockage quickly leads to severe pain. The following causes can be responsible for lumbago:

• Sudden and/or unfavourable movement
• Incorrect lifting of heavy objects
• Deep muscles of the spinal column cramp or are pulled
• Slipped disc (only in rare cases)
• Constrictions in the vertebral region, e.g. due to inflammation (also rare)

There are also various risk factors that increase the likelihood of lumbago. These include:

• Lack of exercise
• Sitting for a long time
• Overweight

Therapy: What Helps against Low Back Pain?

As paradoxical as it may sound at first: light movement is often the best remedy for acute back pain – whether it is a real lumbago or “only” minor complaints. At the very least, you should continue to pursue your everyday life as far as possible. Those who can, ideally take short additional walks every day. If you want to treat lumbalgia with medication, you should test paracetamol – but only as an accompaniment to exercise therapy.

A frequently relieving exercise for acute lumbago is also the so-called step positioning, which can reduce the pain. To do this, lie with your back on the floor, pull your knees up at a 90-degree angle and place your lower legs on a chair or stool. The back should lie really firmly on the floor so that no hollow back is created. In this way you stay lying down for two to five minutes and breathe deeply, then roll over carefully on your side to get up. The step position relaxes the spine and relieves the intervertebral discs.

Prevention: How can Lumbago be Avoided?

Lumbago cannot be completely prevented, as it can theoretically be triggered by a careless movement. However, the probability of lumbago can be reduced by addressing the risk factors. Targeted muscle build-up, more exercise in everyday life and the reduction of overweight are sensible measures for this. Especially those who do most of their work sitting down should make sure that they are compensated by exercise after work.