Last week, the Medical Insider column explained why doctors have so much trouble managing patients with abdominal pain in the emergency department (ED). Not least among the challenges: the multiplicity of causes of belly pain, the lack of clarity on which tests and treatments are best for which patients, and high cost.
This week we sought solutions both to these issues and to the questions that readers submitted on TIME.com’s Facebook page over the past week.
Lower back pain is incredibly common in the human population. An estimated 80% of people will suffer from lower back pain at some point in their life. That means that if you think of ten people you know, eight of them will at some point experience the discomfort and inconvenience of lower back pain. Lower back pain is even said to be the cause of more days of sick leave than any other medical ailment.
Lower back pain, or lumbago, describes the condition of having pain for an extended period of time, at some point in their lower back. Lower back pain can strike from the very end of the spine, at the coccyx or it can affect the sacroiliac joint.
An aching back can have many people reaching for a heating pad, ice pack or a phone to call the doctor.
Lower back pain is the No. 2 reason people call their doctor, behind colds and flu. Most need not worry. Typically, it’s a combination of the natural aging process and a strain or a sprain that causes the pain.
Unless the pain is radiating down the leg or there is numbness, tingling or weakness, “symptoms go away in a couple days without doing much of anything,” said Dr. Mark A. Knaub, director of the Orthopaedic Spine Service at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.
Anybody who has ever visited grandma or grandpa as a small child may well remember the distinctive antiseptic smell of Bengay joint pain reliever. The fact is, as we grow to be grandma and grandpa’s age, joint pain creeps up on all of us. The elderly are, of course, most commonly thought of when it comes to joint pain, but even the young – especially athletes and factory or assembly line workers who perform many repetitive movements – are susceptible to the aches and pains of joints from time to time. But why does joint pain occur? And what can we do to top or prevent joint pain causes?
Joint pain can be caused for a variety of reasons. The most common joint pain cause that people tend to think of is osteoarthritis. Osteo