Back pain may be psychological, new research suggests.
People over estimate their lower back discomfort, a study found.
Lead author Dr Tasha Stanton from the University of South Australia, said: ‘People with chronic back pain and stiffness overestimated how much force was being applied to their backs.
‘This suggests that feelings of stiffness are a protective response, likely to avoid movement.’
Lower back pain is a leading cause of global disability that affects around 9.4 per cent of the population. It becomes chronic in approximately 20 per cent of sufferers.
Back pain may be psychological, new research reveals (stock image)
How the study was carried out
The researchers analysed 15 people with chronic lower back pain who reported feelings of stiffness.
The study’s participants rated their stiffness from ‘not stiff at all’ to the ‘most stiff imaginable’.
These participants were compared against 15 volunteers without such complaints.
The researchers carried out three experiments. The first applied pressure to the spine to determine its stiffness.
In the second experiment, the participants received a force that they were asked to score.
The third experiment assessed whether adding sounds to the perception of pressure changed the participants’ stiffness.
‘People with chronic back pain and stiffness overestimate force applied to their backs’
Dr Stanton said: ‘People with chronic back pain and stiffness overestimated how much force was being applied to their backs.
‘How much they overestimated this force related to how stiff their backs felt – the stiffer [it] felt, the more they overestimated force.
‘This suggests that feelings of stiffness are a protective response, likely to avoid movement.
‘In theory, people who feel back stiffness should have a stiffer spine than those who do not.
‘We found this was not the case in reality. Instead, we found that that the amount they protected their back was a better predictor of how stiff their back felt.’
Referring to the third experiment, Dr Stanton added: ‘[We] found that these feelings could be modulated using different sounds. The feeling of stiffness was worse with creaky door sounds and less with gentle whooshing sounds.
‘The brain uses information from numerous different sources including sound, touch, and vision, to create feelings such as stiffness.
‘If we can manipulate those sources of information, we then potentially have the ability to manipulate feelings of stiffness. This opens the door for new treatment possibilities, which is incredibly exciting.’
The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.