I hurt my lower back yesterday and I went to the doctor today and he said I had a low back paraspinal muscle strain, he also said the muscle was in spasm. I don’t get this as I have had a muscle spasm before on my arm and the muscle would jump around and vibrate and I could feel it with my hand, it also was not very painful. The muscle on my back does not feel like it is vibrating or spasming, but it is very painful. Can anyone explain this to me?
Spasm just means it’s tensed and not releasing.
It’s a cramp, not a twitch. Twitches are those small, painless muscle vibrations you can feel.
How can a doctor tell if a muscle is in spasm? And why is it so painful?
I’m not entirely sure, but my doc can feel them in my back when I’ve gone in with, what I thought was, a pinched nerve or something along those lines a few times. Once I understood what a spasm was (I had the same misunderstanding as you), I figure they can feel around and it’s like finding a flexed muscle or a muscle that’s tight on once side but the same muscle isn’t tight on the other side.
I’m in physical therapy right now for some shoulder surgery and they’re always finding tight muscles (deep down in my shoulder) that I didn’t know were stiff. I wouldn’t believe them since everything seems fine to me, but I can tell when they start to rub them or if they’re trying to bend my arm they can get a few more degrees of motion out of it by pushing on the tight muscle.
I guess when you go to school for it and see people with the same problem day in and day out…
But why would a tight muscle cause severe back pain?
I have the ubiquitous “back trouble”, a little disk bulging, some arthritis, occasional sciatica, and an old work injury. What impressed me was on the first visit I made to the pain clinic the doctor said “I bet it hurts right here” and pressed right on the spot that hurt. He knew right where the nerve met the something and hip joint thingy. I don’t know the technical terms, but he went right to it.
Anyway, back on topic. When I move wrong it hurts my back joints (or whatever) and the pain makes my back spasm. The spasm hurts which causes it to keep spasming. It presses on the nerve(s) and they become inflamed. The relief comes either from days in bed on ice then heat, or a big steroid shot in my back that hurts like heck, but stops the pain for weeks.
I hope your pain does not last long. If you can remember what caused it (a certain movement or being tense and twisting your back for instance) it will help to avoid it re-occurring.
When you say you feel it spasm, is it a throbbing pain in the muscle, or how do you know it is in spasm if the muscle doesn’t move?
My introduction to back spasms was eight or ten years ago.
I had reached into a box and pulled out an item about 10 lbs.
The onset was instantaneous and I saw stars and sank to my knees.
In all honestly, my first thought was that I’d been shot in the lower back.
It was the worst pain of my life.
Ten out of ten.
I recognized signs of shock: tunnel vision, icy cold sweat, confusion, lightheaded sensation, shaking.
After transport and eventual visit to the ER and a few hours had elapsed, the diagnosis of back spasm was delivered and the sharpest of the pain had somewhat subsided. If I laid a certain way, the pain was almost ignorable. Since the spasm was just above my tailbone, virtually any movement would make it scream. It would wake me up at night and I was useless at work. The back is really taken for granted.
Interested in medicine anyway, I read all about these horrible things for days. My understanding, may be wrong, is that they are brought on by the brain itself. For whatever reason, the mind thinks it detects a spinal injury and makes a spasm in the area to immobilize the region. In this way, it forms something like a cast, only made of pain instead of plaster. It works, though, since I could barely pull on a pair of socks or lean over the sink to spit toothpaste for two weeks. My back has never been more pampered, it still throbbed and pulsed.
I also learned that a stiff neck is the same phenomenon.
It never twitches, if anything it firms up. I’d say the area was warm to the touch but that may have been the pain talking.
Now, I’m been able to feel what I call the precursor symptom. It is a unique sensation in the same area as my big one, right above the tailbone. It is a sort of tickle and maybe some dull pressure. I now know to stop what I’m doing and stretch by twisting at the waist while seated in a chair.
There hasn’t been a major one like the first since. I’ve had a few more minor spasms since and one can be attributed to some heroics involving a beer keg.
I’ve certainly saved myself from some by realizing one was inbound and to alter trajectory and stretch it out.
Probably the sacroiliac joint.