After the onset of a trauma to the low back damaged tissues send a strong sensory signal to the spinal cord and brain of pain. Here the incoming sensory signal is amplified roughly ten times and returned to the low back site where we feel pain. The brain responds by returning a motor signal to the affected area to “splint” the affected mussels of the low back. By making the low back tight as well as enlisting surrounding muscles the body attempts to stabilize the compromised structure. This is systemically true and especially with low back pain injuries.
While low back pain is in one’s conscious awareness the neuropathway or nerves being used to communicate the low back pain are being traversed many more times that other areas or the back. During this process the myelin sheath-a protein covering the nerve itself grows thicker resulting in lower resistance to subsequent nerve impulses. This mean the more your low back hurts the easier in the future it will be prone to pain. This is known in neurology as the “Law of Facilitation”. This results in a physical structure of thickened nerves with less resistance. Therefore, future injuries, even in other parts of the body not in the low back may reactivate old low back pain neurologic pathway.