Have you got acute or chronic lower back pain?

There is a big difference in the management of acute and chronic lower back pain. It is important you are clear about the differences between them and understand which type of pain you have got.

Acute Lower Back Pain

Acute pain is pain that has come on recently and that is less than a month to six weeks old. 'Acute' is not a description of the severity of the symptoms although many people use it like that e.g. “I had really acute lower back pain last night and I couldn’t sleep because of it”.  Acute pain simply describes how long you have had the problem.

Chronic Lower Back Pain
This is pain that has lasted for longer than 6 weeks. Again this is a term used to describe the length of time the lower back pain symptoms have been present, not the severity of the symptoms. Many people describe their pain as chronic, meaning it hurts a lot, but as with acute the term simply means you have had the pain for a while.

Many people have lower back pain that flares up periodically and becomes much worse now and then, this is sometimes called acute on chronic pain, although really it fits into the category of chronic pain.

Chronic back pain can be difficult to treat, lots of things influence it, not just the biological problem itself but your general fitness levels, your confidence with movement and how you think and feel about the problem among other things.