Back Pain in Young Adults: Common Causes and Solutions

Back pain - how many times have you bent or straightened your back only to be met with pain? Back pain is a common ailment among young adults in India, with the number of young people asking for spine speciality appointments increasing. One study says that 33% of IT professionals in India experience back pain. Not only that, around 50-80% of Indians experience back pain at some point in their lives, with poor posture being a major contributory factor.

If you are among these people who are experiencing back pains, there can be multiple reasons behind it. So, without much further ado, here are the ten most common reasons for back pain in young adults.

1. Poor Posture

This is the culprit. Sitting or standing with an improper posture for long periods of time, especially with a slouched back and hunched shoulders, can strain your muscles and spine, resulting in debilitating back pain. Poor posture results in muscle strain and imbalance, which can cause tightness, fatigue and pain. It throws your spine out of alignment and puts uneven pressure on your joints, resulting in pain, inflammation and joint degeneration.

Poor posture can compress the discs in your spine, which can result in disc herniation and pinched nerves, all of which are incredibly painful. Poor posture can restrict blood flow to your spinal tissues, making it harder and harder to heal. In fact, when you go for treatments for young adults with back pain, the doctor will first ask about your posture. While there are millions of posture tips for young people in the wild, it basically boils down to only one thing. Regular exercise.

2. Sedentary Lifestyle

This is another issue. The lack of physical activity can result in weak muscles and poor flexibility, which makes the back vulnerable to injury and discomfort. Sitting for long periods, like in office jobs or when using a computer, can result in back pain. Sitting for long periods can cause your back muscles to become stiff and sore.

The muscles that support your spine, like the glutes, thighs and hamstrings, become weak. Then there’s Anterior Pelvic Tilt - sitting for long periods of time can make your pelvis tilt forward, which can weaken the abs and result in lower back pain. Must mention here that sitting can bring down blood flow to your glutes, resulting in an Anterior Pelvic Tilt. When it comes to back pain prevention for youth, an active lifestyle is what you need.

3. Muscle Strain

If you lift heavy objects incorrectly or suddenly, you are at risk of straining the muscles and ligaments in the back, resulting in pain and discomfort. This causes chronic back pain in adolescents. This is quite common in people who do physical activities without proper form. Muscle strain, also known as lumbar muscle strain, happens when the muscle fibres in the back get abnormally stretched or torn.

Symptoms include pain that gets worse as you move, muscle cramps or spasms, reduced range of motion or function-like issues with bending, standing or walking. Some common causes of muscle strain are sudden injuries, like falls or accidents, repeated heavy lifting, playing a new sport and poor physical condition.

4. Herniated or Bulging Disc

The soft discs between the vertebrae and the spine can get damaged, bulge out and press nearby nerves. This causes horrible back pain, numbness and tingling in the legs. Herniated and bulging discs both cause back pain yet come with different symptoms. A herniated disc is when the soft tissue between the bones in your spine protrudes and presses on a nerve. You feel pain on one side of the body, and a sharp pain in the buttocks, leg, hip and numbness in other parts.

You also feel pain that travels down one or both legs. You experience numbness or tingling in the legs and muscle weakness. To top all this, you lose your reflexes in one or both legs. A bulging disc is when the spongy disc between the bones in the spine gets compressed, and the tough outer ring breaks down. Symptoms are pain that can be reduced with OTC medication. You’ll have to do a back pain relief exercise to get relief from pain.

5. Stress and Tension

Emotional stress can result in muscle tension, especially in the back, neck and shoulders. Stress can result in you tensing your back muscles. It can also change your breathing patterns, which can put a strain on your mid-back. Stress causes your shoulders to hunch up, resulting in pain in the upper and lower back.

Also, when you are stressed, your body releases hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which can cause physical tension in the body. If you want to get relief from back pain, try back pain relief exercises for students.

6. Obesity

Imagine carrying a heavy weight all day long. This is what obesity feels like. It can put additional strain on the spine and lower back, which can, over time, cause discomfort and result in chronic back pain. Excess weight can put undue pressure on the spine and compress the lumbar spine, resulting in a pinched nerve and pain.

Fat, over time, can release chemicals that can cause inflammation that wear down our skeleton over time. Weight carried in the abdomen can speed up lordosis, which can dramatically increase the force placed on the spine.

7. Ergonomics For Young Workers

Poor workstation setup, such as a badly positioned computer, chair, or desk, can result in poor posture and strain on the back. Most young adults experience this in office jobs or while studying for long periods of time. Sitting slouching, hunched, or with rounded shoulders can strain the spine, resulting in back pain.

Sitting in such a position can also overstretch spinal ligaments and compress the discs lying between the vertebrae. Sitting for too long can recondition the core, resulting in the lower back being less supported and more susceptible to injury. If you want to improve your ergonomics, try yoga for young adults with back pain for relief.

8. Lack of Core Strength

If you have weak abdominal and back muscles, it can become more challenging to maintain proper posture and support the spine, increasing your risk of developing back pain. Weak core muscles don’t support the spine. When the core is weak, the spine is without support, and your back will hurt. A weak core can also mess up your posture. With a weak core, the lower back muscles must work harder, resulting in pain and discomfort.

A weak core also compresses the spine, compensating for the lack of support, resulting in nerve compression and other spinal issues. And finally, a weak core invites more injury. If you want to improve your condition, you’ll have to perform exercise for teenage back pain to feel better.

9. Sports Injuries

Young adults who participate in sports are at risk of sprains, strains or more serious injuries like fractures or ligament tears that can result in back pain. Whether you’re playing basketball, ice-skating, running, golf or tennis, the spine undergoes too much stress, pressure absorption, twisting, bodily impact and turning.

This puts undue stress on the back,, which is why many athletes complain about back pain. Interestingly, most cases of back pain in athletes can be traced to particular events or trauma.

10. Spinal Conditions

Certain underlying spinal conditions, like scoliosis spondylolisthesis, can cause back pain in young adults. Then there’s spinal stenosis, in which the spinal canal narrows, putting pressure on the spinal cord and nerves, which can be caused by arthritis. Next comes osteoporosis, which can make the bones in the spine brittle and weak.

And finally comes a disease that is so debilitating you’d wish the pain would stop. Ankylosing spondylitis is an inflammatory disease that causes the spine to become less and less flexible.

In conclusion, back pain can have a lot of causes. Poor posture, playing sports, spinal injuries, lack of core strength, poor ergonomics, obesity, stress and tension, a sedentary lifestyle and other factors. If you or someone you know is suffering from debilitating lower back pain, do visit a physician to get a general idea of your condition and what you can do to remedy it. Lower back pain can be very debilitating, so don’t shy away from medical assistance unless you want an injury to deteriorate to such a point that you can’t sit, stand or do anything that you need to do to live.