Blurred vision could be caused by a number of things too, but you still see your optometrist first - they know to send you on if anything looks weird. At least, you do here.
I’m just surprised, that’s all. All us forty-something women in my peer group are in and out of physios constantly for our backs or elbows or whatever. They’d do a lot less business if they depended on doctors referrals
According to my surgeon . . . The spinal cord passes through a narrow channel within the spine. In time, as we age, deposits collect on the surface of the channel, making it narrower. This is similar to the way some people’s arteries become clogged with plaque. The spinal cord is constricted, causing extreme pain in whatever nerves radiate from that location. In my case, it first affected my left hip and leg, then my lower back. This is especially common with older people (I’m 70).
What an odd question.
Yes, a doctor’s visit is certainly in order if you are experiencing pain that won’t go away.
Whenever I have an odd muscular pain that isn’t going away, I go to my sports medicine doctor ($20 copay with my insurance). What they will typically do is rule out any sort of fracture or tear or anything requiring actual surgery, at which point they will then schedule a couple of physical therapy sessions (also $20). The PT trainer will then give me some exercises I can incorporate into my regular workouts and the pain typically goes away in a few weeks.
The point is, $40 and about an hour of my time is a small price to pay to not have a lingering knee, shoulder or back pain.
Even if it is a disc damage, I believe 90% of them heal with time. It may take a year, but it’ll probably get better.
A doctor can probably prescribe painkillers and do some diagnostics to identify the source (X-ray, MRI, etc). I doubt they can fix the underlying problem in this situation.
Any thoughts about going to a chiropractor instead?
I had similar symptoms about 12 years ago. After a week or two it got so bad I was walking with a cane. (I was 45). The hydrocodone they gave me did little for the pain. It was like a river of fire going up the side of my leg. I was almost incapacitated. Finally one night I needed to move some heavy furniture by myself. After twisting and turning in lifting to pick a heavy side table suddenly the pain vanished. It was literally like a miracle. It just washed away and I was back to normal.
About 5 years later it came back and I saw a chiropractor whose efforts re x-rays, electro stimulation, spine manipulation/“cracking” etc were utterly useless. Based on what I saw and what he told me I hold the opinion that chiropractic is pretty much a scam. Finally waiting in his office one afternoon I saw a 3-D model of the spine and it all came together. It was a pinched nerve where the sciatic nerve was being compressed between two discs. I knew then what I had to do. I needed to get to get that nerve back out from between those discs. That’s what the furniture lifting had done in the past. It popped the nerve back out.
I went home and got a floor mat and did the most extensive spine and leg stretching ever seen. I became a bridge and curled into a ball. I pulled my legs back and over my body until I thought they would snap them pushed them some more. I was yelling at the effort. It was essentially flexibility exercises on steroids. After 2-3 days of doing this the pain subsided and then went away by the end of the week. it’s been gone since. Since then whenever I feel a sciatic “twinge” developing I do accelerated stretching and it goes way.
I’ve had this for the last couple of months, and though it’s slowly wearing off, I did finally take it to the doctor when I thought it had been going on for too long, if only to get a prescription for a better than OTC painkiller. So far, we’re waiting on the consultant’s report from an X-ray of the hip and I’m going for extra checks on blood pressure in my leg in case that’s part of it.
Either way, even if the doctor prefers watch-and-wait, which is what they’re likely to do if it’s a slipping disc, you’re more likely to know if it’s worth while if you do go than you would if you don’t.
Many thoughts, all negative…
Where did you find this accelerated stretching information? Are you saying the nerve came out of the foramen and was compressed somewhere else, or did the disc slip and compress the nerve?
The heavy lifting and twisting motion initially popped it back out but that was just luck that I did that lift at the right angle to accomplish that. The second time I realized I had to stretch my legs and spine as far as I could in all directions to get the nerve back out from between the discs and unpinched. It’s kind of uncomfortable to stretch that far. You need a place where you can yell a bit.
In terms of stretching, keep in mind that sometimes the problem is in the muscles of the hips and not the back. There are a ton of muscles that attach from your sacrum to your femur in various ways, and tension or spasm in any or several of them could cause pain mainly located in the low back. These muscles often get bitchy if you sit a lot, like if you work at a computer all day. It can also come from an old lumpy mattress.
Some non-obvious stretches I’ve had to use for low-back pain:
–hamstrings, either touching your toes or propping your heel on a table and folding over your leg
–seal or cobra stretch – it seems like you’re stretching in the wrong direction, but for me it got to some areas that wouldn’t stretch otherwise
–groin stretch – the psoas muscle goes through the pelvis, from sacrum to the inner-thigh part of the femur, so occasionally a ‘groin pull’ will hurt at the sacrum as well as in the groin (or instead of it).
–sitting straddle stretch – sit on the floor with your legs as wide apart as you can get them, and lean forward at the hips. Try to keep your toes pointed to the ceiling. This will mainly stretch your inner thighs/groin area, but I recently discovered that it hits the very deep sacrum pain too, located where no other stretch would touch it.
You may need to experiment to find the stretches that work. I’ve been dealing with some messed up hip and low back muscles for a while, and some of these I didn’t discover until I’d been stretching otherwise for months. The connections are not always obvious (one reason I recommend an LMT, see below…) The straddle stretch I finally discovered after more than a year of trying different stretches, and I’m virtually pain free for the first time in a couple years. (And I discovered it completely by accident.)
If your muscles are really tight it may take some weeks of multiple-times-a-day stretching to release the muscles. If it IS tight muscles, you should know by trying to stretch – the pain intensity will jolt up and it’ll hurt like hell.
For tight muscles, a licensed massage therapist might ultimately be more helpful than a GP doc. LMTs are intimately familiar with musculoskeletal anatomy. Not Swedish “relaxation” massage (this won’t be pleasant, especially for the first few sessions); but look for something along the lines of sports medicine, or therapeutic modalities like Thai.
3 days? Is that all?
I have been keeping detailed records of every little ache and pain for several years (I am now 66).
Since 2012 I have had six backache spells. The shortest were 8 days and the longest 18 days.
The pain is far from incapacitating, but I have to watch how I move to keep from getting a significant twinge.
It is possible some or all of my backaches are gout attacks, but I think not because gout attacks in other locations are much more painful.
My mother told me to give the typical aches and pains two weeks to go away before going to the Doctor. So far I have been able to add a few days to that. My mother’s sound advice has saved me thousands of dollars lifetime.
It could be many things and its probably nothing, but it could be as serious as cancer (back pain was one of my brother in laws first symptoms of the cancer that killed him). So do go to a doctor if there isn’t any improvement after a few days. Don’t go to a chiropractor or physical therapist.
Chances are the doctor will do very little for the first visit - a referral to a PT, some painkillers, an external exam. If it still hurts after a few weeks, go back, the doctor will likely then start looking deeper with an MRI or something. It may not be something they find a solution for (I’ve had shoulder pain for years due to a muscle knot - after years I started to get trigger point injections which are wonderful, but it took years to get there), but you do want to have it checked out.