Ask an expert: Back pain and problems: Back pain myths

Want to know more about back pain and problems?

Mr Andrew Quaile, Consultant Spinal and Orthopaedic Surgeon and Medical Director of SpineWorks answers some common questions about how the back works, back pain myths and how discs in your back age overtime. 

Video Transcript: The back explained

One of the major myths that we see a great deal is that pain equals damage. In the context of back pain or indeed neck pain, pain does not equal damage this is a muscular skeletal pain and therefore it will vary from day to day or even indeed hour to hour depending on the activity level and what’s been going on before. So a lot of what I do is reassure people that the pain they are suffering is not doing permanent damage. 

We tend to describe damage to something which is permanently wrong and will never recover. In other words an amputated leg, had a nose cut off, bitten by a shark, something permanent likes that. The sort of pain that we talk about varies and therefore is not a permanent problem. Therefore pain in this context does not equal damage.