Know how your emotions affect your back

Have you ever wondered how emotions affect back pain? If you suffer from chronic musculoskeletal discomfort, You will be interested to know that psychogenic factors, such as stress, trauma or worry, tend to be the substrate of this debilitating clinical reality.. If Plato said that, sometimes, the body is the prison of the soul, he was not too wrong.

Works such as those published in 2022 in the Journal of Orthopedic Translation They highlight that this condition has a high prevalence globally. We are facing a public health problem that alters a person’s life in many ways. It is more common between 45 and 54 and, as we well know, it is usually one of the main causes of sick leave.

On the other hand, and although the ailment can be explained by poor work ergonomics, hernias, osteoporosis, arthritis or disc degeneration, there is an aspect that is usually neglected: the emotional one. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), up to 80% of back pain episodes have no specific physical cause. Chronic back pain, the maximum body points out, often develops due to psychological factors.

This is how emotions affect back pain

Science has been studying the way our emotions impact our body for decades.. Psychosomatic psychology, for example, analyzes how some ailments are the product of mental factors. This explains why more and more experts are not prejudiced when it comes to admitting that the spine not only supports our physical loads, but also our emotional ones..

Thus, to find out the cause of our back pain, ordinary diagnostic tests such as MRIs are not always enough. The Ibaraki Prefectural University of Health Sciences in Japan highlights how stress often significantly mediates low back discomfort in women. As you can imagine, this cannot be seen on an x-ray.

Because of what has been mentioned, many experts warn of the multidisciplinary approach that must be taken when diagnosing and treating back pain. Some mental disorders can initiate or aggravate these types of conditions, but many variables can also come into play. This is especially true when talking about chronic episodes.

Ways in which you will perceive this relationship

The way emotions affect back pain usually follows a very characteristic pattern that you can identify with. Often, the patient will develop frustration because doctors fail to detect and treat their discomfort; something that in turn will only make the problem worse.

Back pain lasts more than three months and does not go away with ordinary pain relievers such as paracetamol.They have done several clinical tests on you and they cannot find the origin of that discomfort.. Physical suffering is greater on days when you suffer from stress or anxiety. In addition to back pain, you suffer from other conditions, such as headaches, persistent fatigue, dizziness or digestive problems. You have problems getting a quality night’s rest. At night, you have a hard time sleeping. sleep because the black hole of worries appears.Factors such as a bad day, an argument or anguish intensify your back painHaving to face situations that generate anxiety increases this physical discomfort even more. This back pain is affecting different areas of your life: social, work, leisure time and so on.Techniques like physical therapy do not help you as much as they should. The pain always comes back.

It is important to note that emotions can be both the primary and secondary cause of back pain. Indeed, and as Harvard Medical School points out, not all people respond the same to this condition. Responses to pain vary from person to person, as well as the degree to which emotions interfere with the process.

Why do emotions cause physical pain?

As striking as it may seem to us, Back pain is usually one of the most common physical symptoms in patients with depression or generalized anxiety.. Thus, it is possible that you have already gone through a whole journey of physiotherapists and spine specialists without finding relief, without finding a remedy for that recurring back pain.

Until, finally, you receive the correct diagnosis from a psychologist or other mental health professional. Stress, unaddressed trauma, a mood disorder that needs to be treated, and so on; all of this always impacts your body. Thus, the way in which emotions affect back pain is very complex and, generally, the origin lies in these causes that we analyze below.

Dysfunctional processing of emotions

On average, the human being has a curious defect:repressing what hurts you instead of managing what worries you. In this way, when life hurts and worries are many, the most recurrent tendency is repression. We tell ourselves that we are fine and that nothing is happening.

Sooner or later, this set of unregulated emotions ends up manifesting itself in psychosomatic discomfort and physical pain. Thus, from the British School of Osteopathy in the United Kingdom, this same data is highlighted in research. Poor emotional processing correlates with chronic low back pain.

The physical consequences of some emotional states

Many psychological conditions have a very prominent physical correlate. An example of this are mood disorders. As noted by the United States National Library of Medicine, Clinical realities such as depression, anxiety or stress can generate the following:

Muscle tension.Increased heart and respiratory rate.Increased blood pressure.Fatigue.Sleep disturbances.Altered eating patterns.Reduced propensity to engage in physical activity (which can result in weakening of the muscles of the back and other areas).

Keep in mind that emotional variables can not only initiate or continue back pain, They can also interrupt your boarding. For example, a work published in Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation suggested that negative emotions may alter the response to epidural steroid injections for spinal-related pain.

Similarly, presurgical somatic anxiety, hostility, and depression have been found to predict poor outcomes of lumbar surgery to address back pain. Emotions, therefore, materially affect pain; and not only on the psychological level.

Neurotransmitters, emotions and pain

In research published in the journal American Physical Therapy Association point out the causal role of neurotransmitters that cause stress, such as epinephrine, norepinephrine or cortisol, with the appearance of pain itself. Apparently, There is a parallel mechanism that underlies the maladaptive response to pain and emotional factors of a stressful nature..

But this is not all. As stated in a work published in Brain, the brain rearranges or “changes” the circuits that encode and process emotional stimuli in people who suffer from chronic pain. In many of them, brain activity in the face of pain is limited to circuits related to emotions. In theory, this would increase parallelism even further.

Other relationships between emotions and back pain

The above pathways explain why emotions can lead to back pain. There are other mechanisms that, although they have a lower incidence, should not be ruled out. For example, a work published in Pain Practice in 2019 suggested that emotional distress arising from demographic factors, psychobehavioral factors, and the degree of social support elevates the risk of chronic nonspecific low back pain.

Thus, and among other things, The support that a person has can make the experience of experiencing pain more or less. Many of the relationships about how emotions affect back pain remain to be confirmed. In any case, it seems to be bidirectional, and that it explains many of the episodes of non-specific back pain.

How to prevent and treat back pain associated with our emotions?

Many of us will experience lower back pain at some point.. This is the most common condition and would demonstrate how emotions affect the back and, specifically, how psychological suffering also has a serious impact on our body and quality of life.

Let’s visualize an image for a moment. Let’s imagine ourselves with a quiver on our back, a quiver full of arrows prepared to destroy pain, to cope with it better and to defend ourselves from what can adhere to us and cause us suffering.

What kind of “remedy” would those arrows carry to help us? We analyze it.

1. Cognitive-behavioral therapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a highly effective model for detect dysfunctional thinking patterns, manage emotions and promote healthier behaviors. In case we suffer from a psychological disorder, this approach will be the most suitable to achieve greater well-being.

2. Stress reduction based on mindfulness (MBSR)

How emotions affect the back can be regulated through Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) therapy. This is an approach developed in the 90s by Kabat-Zinn that encompasses, from strategies of Mindfulness, of cognitive therapy, relaxation techniques and resources such as Body Scan, focused on becoming aware of one’s own bodily sensations.

Research such as that carried out at the University of Washington highlights the usefulness of this model to reduce chronic low back pain.

3. Changes in our lifestyle

Many times we are involved in unhealthy lifestyle habits for the body and mind. Multitasking, stress, not giving ourselves time to rest and disconnect, have a serious impact on our well-being. Let us try, as far as possible, to promote more relaxed routines in our daily lives, remembering what our priorities are.