Lower Back Pain

What causes lower back pain?

More often than not, back pain is a result of multiple issues. You may have injury or inflammation of the soft tissue around the spine, or an issue with the vertebrae, facet joints, or discs. Tightness in muscles or misalignment of discs can compress nerves, creating residual pain in your legs, hips, pelvis, or shoulders.

What type of pain should concern me?

If you know you pulled a muscle and the pain resolves within a few weeks, you’re probably OK. However, it’s always a good idea to be examined when you’re experiencing low back pain or any other pain along your spine.

Particularly worrisome pain includes:

• Dull and achy pain that’s contained to the lower back
• Electrical, burning pain that radiates from your low back down your legs
• Muscle spasms in the back area
• Pain that increases with long sessions of sitting or standing
• Difficulty changing positions: Especially going from standing to sitting

How can regenerative orthopedics help?

Regenerative orthopedics offers a non-invasive (nonsurgical) way to address your pain. Dr. Panero uses musculoskeletal ultrasound to diagnose and map your pain origins. This ultrasound can also help develop a strategy for healing.

Treatments may include directed stem cell injections or platelet rich plasma therapies, which induce your own healing mechanisms to go into overdrive. With the right therapy, the structure of discs and soft tissue may actually be changed for the better.

Regenerative orthopedics doesn’t just address the symptoms of pain but looks for the origin. For example, you may be feeling pain at your sacroiliac joint (SI), but the origin of this pain is actually due to a disc misplacement and the SI pain is compensatory.

Can regenerative orthopedics help if I have been told I need back surgery?

It’s quite possible your condition may be resolved with nonsurgical methods, but Dr. Panero can only tell after a thorough medical history and exam. It’s worth exploring because stem cell and platelet rich plasma therapies are far more tolerable and have a much shorter healing time. In many cases, this more conservative and less invasive therapy is superior to conventional surgeries and prescription medications.