Back Pain - Treatment - Introduction

There is no doubt that back pain in the UK, and the rest of the world, is extremely common. According to surveys conducted by the Department of Health (ref.¹), 40% of adults in the UK will suffer from back pain every year. Of these, approximately half will experience long term, or chronic, pain and 15% will suffer every day. Put simply, ten million people in the UK suffer from chronic back pain every year.

Although we don’t have detailed statistics for other countries, the situation is likely to be similar. According to the Bone and Joint Decade (an international body supported by the UN, the World Health Organisation, and the World Bank) over 75% of people in the world will experience low back pain at some stage during their life.

This begs the question – is there an effective and widely available treatment on the market, that will treat the causes (and hence the symptoms) of chronic back pain? Given the numbers above, the answer is ‘obviously not’. And yet, in this day and age, this is surprising.

People certainly have access to a wide variety of treatments, from simple painkillers at one end of the spectrum, to complex (and highly expensive) surgery at the other. Chiropractors and osteopaths are very common, so people have access to specialists who should (in theory) be able to do more than simply manage their symptoms – and yet the prevalence of back pain remains very high.

Some of this is undoubtedly a product of general lifestyle and health trends. In the 1^st World, the number of people who are clinically obese (not just overweight) is increasing dramatically; extreme, excess weight is very bad for the back. In addition to this, people are spending an increasing amount of time, either sat at their desks, over their computers or in their cars. All of these activities lead to an increased prevalence of back pain, due to the poor ergonomic environments they represent.

But, the fact remains that most people aren’t receiving the best possible treatment – at least, not yet. This section aims to highlight the products and services we offer, in addition to more widely available treatments.