If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know what my position is on back pain and surgery.

It’s not that surgery is never an option, in fact, it can be very helpful for some individuals with specific symptoms that are not getting better with conservative management.

My problem with our current system is that people are still rushed into getting an X-ray or MRI when it is not indicated.

Patients, you also have a role to play in this as I’ve met MANY who demand they absolutely need an MRI to “find out the root cause.”

It’s not that simple and often may lead to worse outcomes if you get the imaging early due to various beliefs that may come out of receiving this imaging.

What questions do you have for me? Anything I missed?

There is tons of misinformation out there about back pain. It seems that no matter how much good information that is put out, we need an order of magnitude much greater to fight the BS. Our lumbar spine is actually quite durable. Lower back pain is very common and something that can be treated conservatively and non-operatively in most cases. These infographics synthesize the information written in "Should You Fear Lumbar Flexion," by Dr. Sam Spinelli, PT and posted on the site strongerbyscience.com and  "Revisiting The Spinal Flexion Debate: Prepare For Doubt" by Greg Lehman, BKIN, MSC, DC, MSCPT.

Another relevant article by Greg Lehman is "Reconciling Spinal Flexion And Pain: We Are All Doomed For Failure But Perhaps It Doesn't Matter."