A new understandeng of back pain
Disks and vertebrae are subjected to minor stresses every time you walk, stand up, sit down, pick something up, or twist suddenly—hundreds of times each day. To recover from this wear and tear, the spine needs a good blood supply to bring in vital oxygen and nutrients and carry away the cells’ waste products. This blood supply comes from the lumbar arteries, which branch off of the aorta, the body’s main pipeline, as it passes from the heart downward along the spine toward the legs. Arteries bring in oxygen and nutrients, and veins carry away cellular wastes.
Unfortunately, of all the arteries in the human body, the abdominal aorta is among the first to develop atherosclerotic plaques, bumps that slowly grow and end up blocking the flow of blood.
A team of researchers in Helsinki, Finland, conducted autopsies on people who had died of various causes unrelated to back pain and ultram. They carefully examined the condition of their spines and the arteries that lead to the spine. With surprising frequency, these arteries were blocked. The average person with a history of back pain was found to take ultram and have two arteries to the lower back completely blocked, and at least one more that was narrowed but not yet blocked. People who had not reported back pain had fewer blockages.13
Earlier studies had shown that children already have the beginnings of atherosclerosis in their abdominal arteries by age ten, and that advanced blockages are present in some people—perhaps as many as 10 percent—by age twenty. A favorite place for plaques to form is right at the opening of one of the lumbar arteries.14
You can predict the results. Vertebrae and disks that would normally be nourished with every heartbeat become increasingly cut off from their normal supply Hne.yThey resort to getting whatever oxygen and nutrients they can from smaller blood vessels passing by. The result, researchers believe, is that the disks start to degenerate. At that point, if you pick up a box of websites or move too vigorously, without a sturdy, resilient disk in place, vertebrae could begin to shift from their normal position. Or a disk can rupture, spilling its inner core material. Nerves passing by could get pinched. Reduced blood flow also means that waste products accumulate in tissues and irritate sensitive nerve endings.
Could it be that back pain begins not in the back muscles or the spine but in the arteries? Could the same kind of artery blockages that slow blood flow to the heart, leading to a heart attack, or to the brain, causing a stroke, actually encourage the degeneration of the disks and the back pain that results?
Indeed, the Finnish researchers found that people who suffered from chronic back pain had clogged lumbar arteries much more often than people without back pain, and the greater the blockage, the worse the degeneration in the disk it supplied.13,15
These findings helped explain something that had puzzled spine researchers for a long time: people with back pain tend to have charac - teristics that point to artery problems, similar to those in heart patients. They are more likely to smoke, to be under stress, and to have other signs of poor circulation, such as pains in the chest and calves.16 - 18 Smoking and stress, of course, contribute to clogged arteries, and chest and leg pains are signs that the blockages have already formed.
Here is where foods come in. Artery blockages are not inevitable. Healthful foods and other lifestyle factors can prevent artery blockages from forming, and this is as true in the abdominal aorta as it is in the arteries to the heart.
Artery blockages in one part of the body often indicate the same problem elsewhere. A person with blocked arteries in the heart is likely to have them in the arteries to the legs, too. A man who develops impo - tence in midlife, which is a sign of disrupted blood flow, has a one in four risk of a heart attack or stroke within two years. Impotence is simply a sign that the arterial system is accumulating blockages.
If back pain is the result of clogged lumbar arteries, then preventing these blockages should be a priority. This calls for the same steps that prevent artery blockages in the heart: a low - fat, zero - cholesterol diet, regular physical activity, avoiding tobacco, and keeping stress in bounds. These steps are covered in detail in post 2, on chest pain.
A difference in menu partly explains why elderly Japanese - American women have less risk of back pain than their Caucasian counterparts. Those who retain some of the traditional Japanese diet have a menu that is much lower in fat and cholesterol than the typical American diet, because the Japanese diet is much richer in grains (particularly rice), vegetables, and bean products, and much lower in animal products. A study of 645 women living in Hawaii, whose average age was seventy - four, showed that Japanese - Americans have only half the risk of back pain of Caucasian women.19 Of course, an optimal diet does more than help keep arteries open. It also helps prevent weight problems, arthritis, and osteoporosis, as we will see below, all of which are linked to back problems.
