Lots of people suffer from lower back pain. In fact, I have a tear in my disk at L4-L5 which makes my back ache most days. But as the population becomes heavier and heavier, and more sedentary, we can expect lower back pain to remain a problem. But is there something more to lower back pain than inactivity, weight-gain, etc.?
A new study from the Journal of Pain Research looked at how smoking might be a player in the world of chronic lower back pain. They reviewed the Canadian Community Health Survey (cycle 3.1) which looked at 73,507 Canadians, in that so important demographic, of people between the ages of 20 and 59. The researchers considered age, sex, level of education, body mass index (BMI), smoking level, lower back pain and level of activity.
Interestingly, they found a statistically significant prevalence of lower back pain among daily smokers (23.3%) versus non-smokers (15.7%). They were also able to uncover a positive correlation between smoking dose and the risk of lower back pain. Now, I'm not sure what possessed the researchers to look at this data stratification, but I have to say, it is an interesting finding.
Who would have thought that lower back pain might be some how correlated to the person's smoking habit. Could it be something physiological? Perhaps, something in the behavioral act of smoking that causes lower back pain? But regardless of why, it does appear to be a variable.
So if your back hurts and you smoke, try quitting cigarettes and see if your back pain doesn't improve. Hey, when you're looking for reasons to quit smoking, get as many as you can. Then hopefully, you'll get so many reasons to quit, that you'll just do it.
