Back pain can have a lasting impact on your health and your overall life quality. If your back is stiff and sore, makes it difficult to move, or prevents you from standing, sitting, or laying down comfortably, completing basic, everyday tasks is guaranteed to be challenging. Worse still, when back pain is left unresolved, it can start undermining the functionality and integrity of other musculoskeletal structures.
In this way, untreated back pain can eventually become a progressive and incredibly widespread problem. After all, when your back hurts, you probably don’t hold or move your body like you normally do. Efforts to alter your posture and to get things done without exacerbating your back pain can wind up placing tremendous stress on nearby muscles, joints, ligaments, and more.
There are also many secondary effects that unresolved back pain can have on your life. Most people who live with chronic back pain often rely on store-bought or prescription pain medications to alleviate their discomfort. Although taking these pills can be an effective, short-term solution to discomfort, continually taking them over long stretches of time can result in:
- Addiction
- Digestive upset
- Long-term stomach issues
- Problems with the liver and kidneys
Even common over-the-counter products such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin and Ibuprofen can take a serious toll on the body if overused. Becoming overly reliant upon pain medications can also be expensive. Moreover, many people living with chronic back pain regularly spend money on a variety of other pain relieving agents.
Your home may be filled with special pillows, back support braces, heating pads, personal massagers, and other tools for promoting temporary relief. In most cases, however, the only way to truly resolve back pain and prevent it from recurring is by addressing it right at its source.
Why Untreated Back Pain Has Long-Term Effects
The different ways in which your back pain might have a long-term impact on your body depends upon its underlying cause. If you’ve got a slipped or compressed disc, failing to have this properly treated could allow it to spiral out of control.
Although taking pain pills will alleviate some of your discomforts, this strategy is unlikely to reduce any built-up pressure, stress, or tension, and it certainly won’t realign your spine or restore its overall health. Back pain can be the result of unhealthy life habits that overwhelm your back muscles and cause them to spasm. It can also be caused by poor bending and lifting techniques, poor posture, and excess body weight among many other things.
Until the cause of your discomfort is identified, certain life habits and movements will continue causing your condition to worsen.
Over time, this discomfort might lead to:
- Difficulties maintaining your balance
- Severely degenerated discs
- Tension headaches
- Greater risk of falling
Chronic back pain can also make you feel fatigued. It can affect your focus, your mood, and even your oral health. If you’ve been dealing with unresolved back pain, you may be clenching your jaw throughout the day, or grinding your teeth. When your back hurts, your posture can change dramatically.
As a result, you’ll start relying more heavily on nearby muscles to get simple tasks done. At the start of your discomfort, you may be dealing with stiffness in your lower back. After several days of forcing other muscles to overcompensate, this stiffness and the related discomfort can begin to affect your thigh muscles, your knees, your neck, your shoulders, or other areas and structures. Back pain is often indicative of problems in the spine’s alignment.
Thus, it’s additionally important to consider the dual roles of the spine. Although the spine is largely recognized as the body’s central support structure, it’s also the pathway by which essential communications are passed between your body’s nerves and your brain. Alignment issues can negatively affect the transmission of these messages, thereby causing multiple systems throughout the body to flounder or fail. Subluxations or misalignments of the spine can lead to decreased immune system functioning, hormonal and chemical imbalances, migraine headaches, and many other health issues.
Ultimately, the longer that you wait to have your back pain assessed and treated, the more widespread and severe this problem is likely to become. If you’ve been dealing with back pain and want to find a safe, natural, and effective way to resolve it, we’re here to help. Get in touch with us now by calling 205-637-1363.
