Johns Hopkins Health Alerts | Back Pain - Osteoporosis | How to Cope With Stress - Induced Back Pain

Two studies point to the connection between poor emotional coping skills and back problems.

If you have pain in your back, the source may be inside your head. One of the main causes of back pain is emotional stress, and back pain may be a signal that you are not coping well with stress, according to two new studies.

A recent study of more than 48,000 men in the Swedish Army clearly shows the link between back problems and the ability to cope with stress. These military recruits took a battery of medical examinations, intellectual tests, and a test of their ability to cope with stress. Coping was defined as efforts to manage or modify the negative impact of stress.

The researchers found that more than 5,000 men had a back problem severe enough to interfere with military service. The vast majority of these problems were nonspecific back pain and disease. Those who had poor coping skills were more likely to have back pain. Interestingly, good coping ability and intelligence were strongly associated, which may mean that the smarter you are, the easier it is to learn how to handle stress.

In a similar study, a group of 368 U.S. Army soldiers filled out questionnaires about their health and work habits at their first visit to a clinic for acute low back pain. Job stress was related to emotional distress, and this distress was directly related to clinic visits for back pain. The more emotional distress a soldier had, the more return visits to the clinic it took to solve the back pain.

This study confirms other research that shows the combination of psychological distress and the physiological demands of work relate to increased risk of back symptoms. The Army researchers believe that job stress plays an important role in persistent low back pain, and that reducing emotional distress can reduce that pain.

What’s the Connection? It’s common knowledge that people under stress are tense, and that tension can easily settle in your back. If you experience constant stress, even at a low level, your muscles may be tightening up so often that you don't notice anything out of the ordinary. But those taut muscles can send a strong signal of pain to your brain. The pain may lead you to become leery of doing normal activities. Limiting your movement and activity only leads muscles to become deconditioned and weaker, which in turn leads to more back pain. This sets up a vicious cycle that may end up in chronic back pain.

Johns Hopkins Health Alerts | Back Pain - Osteoporosis | How to Cope With Stress - Induced Back Pain