Herniated disc, sciatica, muscle spasm — these are all well-known culprits behind low back pain, which is the leading cause of disability around the globe. Closer to home, about 39% of adults report back pain.
In this blog post, our experienced team of spine health experts at Pain Medicine Consultants wants to discuss a common, yet not well-known driver of back pain — sacroiliac joint (SI) dysfunction.
And our reason for this is simple: SI joint dysfunction accounts for about 15% to 30% of cases of low back pain, so it’s a condition that's well worth understanding better.
At the base of your spine is a triangular piece of bone called your sacrum, which consists of five vertebral segments fused into one bone. This fusion of bone occurs in adolescence and early adulthood.
Your sacrum attaches to the crests of your hip bones by small joints called SI joints, and there are two — one on each side of your pelvis.
While SI joints may be small, their role couldn't be bigger, given that they attach your upper body to your lower body. Further still, your SI joints provide crucial stability and shock absorption between your upper and lower body.
To perform these duties, your SI joints need to be fairly stable, and they don’t allow for much movement, unlike other joints.
Now let’s look at how issues in your SI joints can lead to low back pain. In short, there are three ways in which this can happen:
While these are different issues, they can each lead to considerable low back pain, as well as other symptoms that we get into in a minute.
We also want to note that SI joint dysfunction is more common in women, largely due to pregnancy.
Low back issues often share symptoms, making SI joint dysfunction more difficult to identify, especially since the condition is not as well known as others.
That said, common hallmarks of SI joint dysfunction include:
As you can see, it can be tough to connect the dots if you don’t know what you’re looking for, which is why it’s always a very good idea to see us for a definitive diagnosis.
While we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, we do want to quickly touch on how we go about treating SI joint dysfunction. First, we make you comfortable through rest, activity modification, and pain management steps, such as spine injections.
Once you’re more comfortable, in most cases we work on strengthening your pelvic girdle through physical therapy to relieve the pressure on your SI joints.
Again, the important takeaway here is that we want you to come see us for an evaluation so we can get you on the road to relief as quickly as possible.
To determine what’s behind your low back pain, please don't hesitate to contact one of our offices in Pleasant Hill, Corte Madera, or Pleasanton, California, to schedule an appointment.
