What causes lower back pain in women?

Among the many complicated health issues we face, back pain is among the most prevalent. While back pain affects both genders, women suffer more.

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Among the many complicated health issues we face, back pain is among the most prevalent. While back pain affects both genders, women suffer more. According to statistics, about 80%women have suffered back pain that lasted for about one year. Most causes of this back pain are mainly gynaecological according to the German Association of Gynaecologists. Persistent or recurring back pain is often due to gynaecological issues, nerves, ligament stress, fibroid tumours, menstrual cramps and pregnancy. Doctors classify these causes into four categories, structural causes, de-conditioning, medical conditions and psychological stress.For structural causes, gynaecologists say that these ones are not modified or controlled. But there are certain things that can be done to alleviate them. These causes include, degenerative discs, arthritis, spinal steriosis, compression fractures due to osteoporosis, scoliosis.For the de-conditioning causes, doctors say that unlike the structural causes, these ones can be controlled. In this case  the lower portion is the area that normally bears all the weight of the body and so all the twisting and lifting done by someone each time affect this area making it the weakest part of the body that needs to be strengthened. The causes of this are lack of conditioning, excess body weight, smoking (though no clear evidence of this as to how it is related to the pain), poor posture, poor muscle flexibility among others. Doctors advice us to keep a healthy weight, correct body posture and practice a healthy lifestyle.For the psychological causes, which include lack of sleep, stress and depression, which normally increase muscle tenson, doctors advice us to do regular exercises and practise proper hygiene. These can help alleviate the pain. Exercise is the only way to strengthen the muscles and condition them to make them more flexible in order to minimize the pain.We have the medical causes which can be alleviated only by medical treatment, they may not be structural in nature e.g. urine tract infection, cancer, pelvic inflammatory diseases, kidney stones, menstruation, which is the main cause of pain in women.Gynaecologists also take pregnancy as another major cause of back pain in women. The weight of the baby and the hormonal changes in the woman’s body during pregnancy may exert a lot of pressure on the lower back area of the body thereby increasing the load. Light stretches and gentle exercises under supervision of an expert is advised.