Movement Dysfunction. The cause of Low Back Pain

It is becoming clearer that the massive majority of people experiencing chronic low back pain actually suffer from a primary Functional Disease. Dr Johnson refers to this as the disease of Movement Dysfunction in relation to the lumbo-pelvic spine and musculoskeletal system.

For many years now the Back Pain Therapeutic Industry has delivered purely symptom based interventions for the secondary structural effects to the spine caused by Movement Dysfunction.

The common structural and symptom focused interventions may temporise pain symptoms but pain will with certainty recur and become chronic if the Functional cause of the pain is not resolved. Eventually the compromised structural integrity will progress beyond the bodies ability to naturally repair the structural changes and structural surgery then becomes a serious consideration.

The key to reversing the epidemic of back pain symptoms that we are now observing is to intervene early on in the back pain journey with therapy that specifically addresses the Functional cause of the pain.

A Functional Intervention or treatment is required for a Functional Disease.

Most people conceptualise a structural problem easily but have more difficulty understanding and resolving a functional problem. The disease of Movement Dysfunction refers to reduced proficiency, coordination and skill of moving your lumbar spinal joints (motion segments comprised of the disco-vertebral joint and two facet joints). People who eventually suffer from low back pain are not even aware that they are moving their spinal joints poorly. Often they have visited many people in the back pain therapeutic industry including doctors, surgeons and physical therapists and they have never been educated about Movement Dysfunction. They have never been guided towards understanding the definition of good versus bad movement in relation to their lumbar spine.

As a consequence, overtime the accumulation of poor spinal joint movement results in accumulative biomechanical stress which then leads to accumulative biological inflammation and then subsequent pain, disability and the secondary structural changes that become evident on spinal imaging. Note that as we age we accumulate normal pain free degenerative changes. These structural changes are NOT the cause of back pain. Contrast this with painful degeneritis which occurs regardless of age in the presence of Movement Dysfunction and is ABNORMAL and IS the cause for low back pain. Do not accept that your back hurts simply because you are getting older. Many young people in the prime of their working lives suffer from chronic low back pain.

It is critical to break this progressive harmful positive feed back cycle as early as possible by specifically targeting the disease of Movement Dysfunction.

How do we treat the disease of Movement Dysfunction?

The ReActiv8 system represents the first Functional Surgery for chronic low Back pain symptoms.

This is a critically important distinction from existing, solely Structural Surgical interventions and reflects the necessary paradigm shift in managing the epidemic of low back pain which is clearly the result of a Functional Disease I refer to as Movement Dysfunction.

Subsequent to the safe and minimally invasive implantation and activation of the Lumbar Multifidus Intersegmental Stabiliser muscles, patients acquire the ability to progressively restore Movement Proficiency.

I promote this through mandatory post-operative specific Functional Movement Therapy. The disease of Movement Dysfunction can be cured and with that so to can Chronic Low Back Pain Symptoms.