The Many Facets of Facet Syndrome

You have a facet joint in your back. Actually you have many facet joints, because a facet joint is the joint that exists between two vertebrae. These joints are what give your spine mobility while keeping the vertebrae lined up. Without the joints, the spine wouldn’t have controlled movement.

Facet joints can cause back pain when the joint is injured or becomes worn due to age. The joint can swell and the result is back pain. The pain doesn’t occur exactly where the joint is located though. It normally causes pain in the lower back to the side of the spine. The good news is the pain doesn’t last forever and will eventually go away until the next inflammation. That’s exactly how other joints in your body work also. While the joint is inflamed, you can use ice on your back or take anti-inflammatory medications. Sometime the pain becomes chronic which means you may need to see a doctor to get a more intense treatment.

All Dried Up

Getting a diagnosis of degenerative disc disease can be scary. It sounds so awful in several ways. Degenerative means a steady decline and disc disease indicates something abnormal is happening to your back. In essence, degenerative disc disease is when the disc between vertebrae starts drying out. If it gets dry enough the disc can eventually collapses and can cause other back problems.

The good news is that it’s really not a disease. Degenerative disc disease is a normal step in the aging process. Actually, a lot of things get drier in the body as it ages if you think about it including skin and hair. There’s really not a lot that can be done about degenerative disc disease itself. If the drying up of the disc causes other problems like vertebrae collapsing then there are several treatments that can be applied. For the most part, the best thing you can do is regular back exercises to keep the muscle support system strong.

It Hurts but It’s Not Serious

Diagnosing the cause of a back problem can be very difficult. The source of pain can be almost impossible to pinpoint in many cases. A muscle strain won’t show up on a MRI or X-ray making it hard to say exactly what’s been injured. But one of the most common diagnosis is muscle sprain. A strain can actually be a muscle, ligament or tendon strain.

When you strain your back, there’s a limited number of things you can do to make it feel better. Often, it just takes some time for the sprain to heal. You can reduce your physical activity while it’s healing. You can also put an ice pack on the area where it hurts right after the injury happens. There are plenty of over-the-counter medications you can take too. As the pain begins to go away, you should start moving around again. It usually only takes a few days for a sprain to get better.

Explain the Difference

There’s a difference between a bulging disc and a herniated disc. The disc, if you remember, is the cushion between vertebrae in your spine. A bulging disc is a disc that pushes out but doesn’t actually rupture the wall of the disc. A herniated disc is a disc that bulges toward the back of the spine and it does break through the disc wall. The outside wall of the disc is called the annulus fibrosis.

The back pain you feel with a herniated disc is due to the disc pressing on a nerve. You can actually feel the pain in your legs if it’s a lower back vertebrae that presses on the nerves that runs down your legs. Most herniated discs happen in the lower spine or lower back. When the sciatica nerve is pressured by a herniated disc, the pain can be intense all the way down the leg. There are lots of things the doctor can potentially recommend you do to relieve the pain. You can do exercises to strengthen the back, take anti-inflammatory medications or get steroid injections for example.