What should I do next for lower back pain that occured on running?

Thank you for sharing your problem - back pain can be a real concern and having experienced it before I fully empathise!

Did the pain come on suddenly and was there any pain that travelled into your leg?

What was the nature of your pain? Pain with flexion is often associated with a discogenic, cause and it doesn’t always require there to be radicular (nerve-related) pain.

Localised pain may be due to a facet joint or area of increased muscle tone - depending on where the pain localises to.

For most back pains, symptoms will resolve with offloading, analgesia and good rehabilitation. In situations where pain is ongoing or where you have worrying symptoms, further investigation may be warranted.

Perhaps you could start with rehabilitation for your back with a physiotherapist, offloading from the aggravating activity and looking at a running gait analysis to investigate whether your symptoms are arising from your running form.

Good luck with your symptoms and running - please do contact us if you have further questions.

Bw

Dr Dinesh

thanks for your queries. Dr Dinesh is right, pain from a disc (discogenic) is usually made worse with flexion.

Lower limb symptoms like pain or tingling (radiculopathy) might not always be there, and may happen in the future if not managed properly.

Sometimes, an annular tear within the disc also causes such symptoms that you have experienced. One of the more common causes would not be a frank prolapsed disc, but a disc bulge with or without an annular tear.

Muscular spasms can also cause back pain after running. We would need to do an MRI to ascertain the pathology if your symptoms are persistent. Ibuprofen or some other anti-inflammatories like Arcoxia or Celebrex would be useful to relieve the symptoms.

If your back pain persists, I would recommend for you to visit an orthopaedic surgeon to have the back evaluated. This would require a thorough examination of the back and lower limbs, and further radiological investigations like X-Rays or MRIs may be indicated as well.

Best regards

Dr Sean Ng

Thank you for your questions. I agreed with both Dr. Sean and Dr. Dinesh that your pain is likely "discogenic", meaning that it is coming from the disc, which is the cushion in between the bones. There are also a spectrum of a "slipped disc", only when the slipped disc is very severe and compressing onto the nerve then you will develop tingling sensation or sciatica.

Of course we don't want to wait until then before we do a thorough checkup on you, I'd recommend a MRI scan for you to investigate the actual cause of the pain and the severity of the condition.

From the description of your symptoms, it is probably not too bad yet and unlikely that you will require a surgery. Once we clinch the diagnosis, we would be able to start your rehabilitation program step by step, typically with medication and physiotherapy first.

I hope we alleviate some of your worries.

Cheers,

Dr. Henry Chan