Your Lower Back

From vertebrae to discs, muscles and nerves, your lower back handles the pressure and shock absorption of keeping you standing up and walking. Then, there are the aches that may come along with strain and injury.

In order to stand up straight and walk upright, our lower back handles pressure and shock absorption. We’re not complaining about walking, so we have to train our lower backs to support the rest of our bodies.

There are numerous risk factors related to back pain. These include smoking, your age, your job and certain diseases, like arthritis. The two biggest factors are omental obesity (excessive fat around your abdominal tissues and organs) and core muscle weakness.

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With obesity, it makes some anatomical sense: The bigger your belly, the more likely it is that your center of gravity is pulled forward. This puts strain on the back. If you drop weight you may be able to ease the tension.

You can still have back problems if you’re very skinny. Weak core muscles are probably to blame. This area includes your hips, lower back and abdominals. That core tissue acts as a back brace. It’s made of muscles, tendons and ligaments.

If your anatomical back brace is tight, you’ll absorb shock and provide a strong foundation for the movement you do throughout the day. But if your brace is loose and weak, this could result in severe pain (when you do something as simple as handing your kid a bottle from the front seat).

Your back is made of an intricate system of nerves, bones and tissues. Here are the main ones to know about.

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Vertebrae and Discs
Your spine is made of small, stacked bones that form a column separated by discs. You could think of the spine as a column of doughnuts, separated by wedges of cheese.

The doughnut portion would be the vertebrae. The spinal cord travels inside the holes. The cheese wedges are the discs. When you put too much weight and twist on the spine, the disc of cheese squishes out. This is called a bulging disc, which pushes against and compresses either the spinal cord or the nerve root on either side.

The oozing discs can leak irritating chemicals, which cause inflammation and great pain. Diluting or washing away these chemicals (with liquid injections like steroids) seems to relieve pain successfully.

The curvature of your spine is for shock absorption. If the spine were straight, the impact would all be passed directly from our feet to our head. We are able to have a narrow, fast gait because we walk with our legs, not our spine.