What Causes Back Pain?

If you suffer from back pain, you know how important it is to find some relief. Prolonged back pain doesn’t just affect you physically; it can affect you emotionally as well, resulting in mood swings, feelings of anxiety, irritability, frustration, and even depression.

The first step to feeling ‘normal’ again is understanding what’s causing your back pain.

Fortunately for most people, back pain isn’t the result of a significant injury or disease. This means back pain can often be treated, even prevented in the future, by making some simple changes to your diet, exercise routine, posture, core strength and mattress.

Most back pain is mechanical in nature, meaning there is a disruption in the way the back – the spine, muscles, intervertebral discs, and nerves – fit together and move. Some examples of mechanical causes include:

• – Sprains and strains

• – Intervertebral disc degeneration

• – Herniated or ruptured discs

• – Radiculopathy (a condition caused by compression, inflammation and/or injury to a spinal nerve root)

• – Sciatica (compression of the large nerve that travels through the buttocks and extends down the back of the leg)

• – Spondylolisthesis (when a vertebra of the lower spine slips out of place, pinching the nerves)

• – A traumatic injury

• – Spinal stenosis (narrowing of the spinal column that puts pressure on the spinal cord and nerves)

• – Skeletal irregularities (e.g. scoliosis, lordosis and other congenital anomalies of the spine)

Common back pain often doesn’t have just one root cause. There can be a number of contributing factors which, when combined, result in back pain.
Some of these factors include:

• – Sitting for long periods without taking a break

• – Poor posture

• – Lifting objects that are too heavy

• – Poor core muscle strength

• – Feeling stressed or anxious

• – Smoking

• – Being pregnant

• – Not getting the recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day

• – Being overweight

• – Slipping or falling

Our backs work hard all day, carrying the weight of our bodies. At night when we’re asleep, they have a chance to relax and the bones, discs, nerves and muscles can rest, repair and rejuvenate.

However, one of the main problems with back pain is it affects our ability to get a good night’s sleep. Around two-thirds of people experiencing back pain suffer from disrupted sleep, which in turn aggravates back pain, setting in motion a vicious cycle.

Your mattress is the most important factor in supporting your back during sleep.

At SleepMaker, we want to make your bed shopping as simple as possible, so to help you find the right bed mattress that will make sleep better for you, we have curated our bed ranges into three simple edits: Luxury, Performace and Essentials. If back pain is an issue for you, consult your doctor and invest in a mattress that supports you properly. The Miracoil back care mattress by SleepMaker is an important range within our Performance edit and it features the continuous coil design, for consistent, even body support throughout the night. There is no comparable mattress for superior back support.

Discover more helpful articles on the SleepMaker Sleep Guide:

How Different Sleeping Positions Can Affect Your Back

7 Ways to Relieve Back Pain and Stop it Returning

Why Back Pain Increases With Age

How Your Pillow Can Affect Back Pain

Four Easy Ways to Keep Your Back Happy

Download our guide Living with back pain? How to sleep better and get on with your life to learn more about taking care of your back, managing your pain and getting a good night’s sleep.