Upper back pain usually falls into one of 2 potential categories of suffering. Some patients experience upper thoracic back pain, often combined with neck pain as their primary source of discomfort. Other patients experience it in tandem with lower back pain as an additional symptomatic region. My personal experience was one of chronic and acute lower back pain that was occasionally relieved and replaced by acute upper back and neck pain. When the pain was relieved in the upper back, it would always return more fiercely than ever in the lumbar region.
This resource section focuses on symptoms that affect the upper back and surrounding anatomical regions. We will also examine the incidence of middle back pain.
Upper Back Pain Causes
The type of back pain I am discussing in this article is not the fleeting muscular pain so often experienced in the upper back. Back muscle pain is very common, but also heals rather quickly and without any particular treatment. The type of pain I am talking about is unresolved long-term back pain. This is the type of pain that makes life a living hell for a patient. It is physical and mental torture, since the symptoms are unrelenting and the patient never receives a clear cut answer why their pain does not get better despite treatment after treatment after treatment.
Many of the common causes of back pain do not typically apply in the middle and upper back areas, since spinal degeneration is not usually severe here due to the anatomical design of the region. Additionally, the thoracic area is very resilient to injury, eliminating that as a source of symptoms for most patients. One of the only upper back-specific pain conditions is thoracic outlet syndrome.
It is vital to know that the upper back does not usually suffer significant disc or bone issues, especially when compared to the cervical and lumbar regions. The thoracic spine is supportive and protective, not flexible and versatile. Kyphosis issues are possible as the source of symptoms in some patients, but are usually not problematic, unless they are severe or extreme.
Due to these anatomical facts, it is clear that many seemingly structural upper back pain syndromes in the thoracic spine may be sourced from some completely different process altogether. This is why it is wise that some patients with ongoing and defiant upper back pain symptoms consider an alternative explanation for their suffering, especially if multiple therapies have already failed them.
Upper Back Topics
Upper back problems might not affect the largest number of patients, compared to lower back and neck pain conditions. However, we still investigate some of the most common upper back issues in the following dialogs:
Upper back relief can be provided with various methods of care. If relief is difficult to find, the diagnosis is often flawed.
Upper back spasm can often become a harrowing ordeal, since the muscles involved are large and powerful.
Upper back symptoms might center on pain, or may also include tingling, weakness and numbness, among other possible expressions. Meanwhile, middle back pain symptoms are the least often seen in clinical medicine.
The diagnosis of upper back pain is one of the leading causes of failed therapy. If the diagnosis is not sound, then treatment is bound to fail, often miserably.
Upper back treatment does not enjoy the same degree of attention as other more common forms of dorsopathy therapy. However, there are still many useful modalities that can provide soothing comfort from pain.
Middle back pain diagnosis is often fruitless and leads the patient further off course with contraindicated treatments. Meanwhile, the reason why so many middle back pain treatment options fail is due to common mistaken diagnosis of the true origin of pain.
Upper Back Pain Realities
The vast majority of all back pain is blamed on some spinal abnormality caused by degeneration or traumatic injury. Quality treatments are designed to cure these abnormal conditions and therefore relieve the associated symptoms. However, most patients with chronic back pain do not improve, despite successful resolution of the abnormal spinal condition deemed to be causative.
Many patients actually get much worse after “successful” treatment. This is proof positive that the suspected tie between so called abnormal spinal conditions and pain is completely inaccurate. It is no wonder that many major medical organizations and associations have now warned doctors against using diagnostic imaging of irregularities in the spine to theorize about the cause of pain.
In addition, medical science must also account for the hundreds of millions of people who also have these same back pain scapegoat abnormalities in their spines, yet experience no pain or related symptoms at all.
If you view the complete picture when it comes to treatment resistant back pain, it is obvious that medicine has lost its way and stumbled down the wrong path, hopelessly lost as to what actually causes chronic symptoms. Ongoing back pain may be the result of some psychosomatic process. Either the pain syndrome is actually caused by the psychological issues or it is simply perpetuated by them.
A large number of structural back injuries act as triggers for the start of psychological pain syndromes to begin. However, no one expects that the physical injury has long since healed and the pain continues due to emotional repression of painful psychological issues or the diagnostic nocebo effect. This is one of the reasons why medical treatments fail in so many patients. Their physical body does not require healing. It is their mind that requires treatment and luckily, knowledge therapy is available to treat these often undiscovered sources of torture and pain.
Mindbody medicine has grown in support from traditional physicians and complementary caregivers alike, mostly due to its proven efficacy made famous by such renowned doctors as John E. Sarno and Andrew Weil.
Help for Upper Back Pain
If you are one of the millions suffering every day with chronic back pain, take heart. If you have tried everything to cure your pain with no success, take heart. If you are at the end of your rope, feeling fearful and frustrated because of your unrelenting back pain, take heart. There may still be a cure for you. But, you might have to change the way you view your back pain.
You may have to unlearn all the myths and misconceptions about why you have pain and how to cure it. You have to relearn how to become an active part of your own treatment and move towards the path to good health. There is no medicine, no drugs, no secrets, no new age mumbo jumbo, no nonsense and no tricks. There is also no cost involved.
The power to cure your upper back pain could already be inside of you. All you need to do is learn how to use it. Sounds to good to be true? Well, for me and tens of thousands like me, it has become reality.
I became pain-free after suffering with documented and diagnosed physical pain from a variety of spinal sources for 18 years. I cured myself using knowledge therapy. What do you have to lose? Why not give it a try and have the potential to realize just how wonderful life is once you can truly leave your pain behind and move forward.
Our complete Cure Back Pain Forever Program offers immediate help for severe pain. The program is acclaimed by many of the most influential names in upper back pain treatment today.
