3 Red Flags for Back Pain - Health Channel

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3 Red Flags for Back Pain, Health Channel

To consider visiting a doctor for you back pain you have to be aware of some red flags.

Amir Mahajer, Interventional Spine Specialist at Baptist Health Neuroscience Center, says some of them are your legs are becoming weak, your numbness becomes worse every day and you feel you are losing your bowel, for example.
Other risk factors to seek urgent care are a previous illness, such as cancer or severe pain at night that wakes you from a deep sleep. Aging, genetics, occupational hazards, sedentary lifestyle and excess weight are top back pain risks.

Transcript

3 Red Flags for Back Pain, Health Channel

Doctor when should we see a health professional because sometimes when there’s low back pain sometimes it gets better in a few days so when does one say okay I need to go to the doctor. Some things you really have to think about as far as low back pain is some red flags so one thing that every viewer has to think about is if you’re having progressive neurologic decline like your legs are continue becoming weak if you’re numbness becoming worse every day and if you’re losing your bowel or bladder like becoming incontinent those are red flags and you should seek emergency care immediately other things are risk factors if you’ve had cancer you have risk factors of cancer or something to think about or severe pain at night that wakes you from a deep sleep it’s those are all risk factors they should seek urgent or emergent care otherwise you see if a health profession if it’s not getting past the acute phase if you’ve tried to rest walk and stretch and it’s not getting better you should definitely see your primary care doctor to initiate the care and then sometimes you’ll require referral to a subspecialty center such as the Spine Center Neuroscience Center Baptist. Thank you for bringing up some of those risk factors we also have some I’d like to show to our viewers and these are very common doctor aging genetics occupational hazards sedentary lifestyle excess weight – all of those are factors for back pain. Genetics is like the number one it’s something we can’t help but all the other ones you can kind of work around so occupational hazard sedentary lifestyle weight I would also say nutrition is key here too those are all things that are modifiable and you can discuss with your primary care physician or spine specialist what you can do to improve your health.

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