Lower back pain is one of the biggest culprits of pain and disability in the United States. It affects many seniors every day. The problem with lower back pain is that when it occurs, the person is often bedridden until the pain subsides and they can once again move freely. For some seniors, this pain can go on for as long as a week before it settles, if it ever truly settles at all. As people get older, they are more susceptible to lower back pain which can happen for a variety of reasons.
After years of treating seniors with back pain, I find it’s often helpful to tell seniors what the main causes of lower back pain are so that they can avoid back pain in the future. Here are some of the top causes of lower back pain amongst seniors.
Previous Lower Back Injury
Seniors who are experiencing lower back pain have often suffered from a similar pain due to a previous injury. In my experience working as a physiotherapist, most seniors with back pain will sya their pain never resolved itself and that they never bothered to see a healthcare professional to fix it. More often than not, people assume the pain will get better or eventually go away, but it usually doesn’t. Especially without treating the original cause.
If you have had lower back pain in the past and never got it checked out or treated, you’ll likely experience another flare up of pain later in life.