Can Trigger Point Injections Help My Lower Back Pain?

All you did was trip slightly or lift something, and you feel that twinge in your back that signals oncoming lower back pain. Or, maybe you woke up with back pain after sleeping in an awkward position.

You’re certainly in good company. Back pain is the leading cause of disability around the world and here in the United States — in 2019, 39% of American adults reported back pain.

If you’re looking for meaningful relief for your lower back pain, you’ve come to the right place. The team here at Neuropathy & Pain Centers of Texas specializes in back pain, and we offer a wide range of effective treatment options, including trigger point injections.

The many roads to back pain

Nearly 620 million people around the world are living with lower back pain, for a number of reasons. Back pain can be the result of many things, including:

• Nerve compression issues like sciatica
• Degenerative disc disease and herniated discs
• Spinal stenosis
• Arthritis
• Muscle strains
• Muscle spasms

This list is far from comprehensive, but our goal is to illustrate that some issues are spine-related, while others are due to soft tissue problems like muscle strains and spasms. 

Trigger point therapy and lower back pain

Trigger point injections can do the most good for lower back pain issues when they’re related to your soft tissues rather than your spine. More specifically, trigger point therapy excels when there’s myofascial pain, which accounts for between 30% and 85% of patients with musculoskeletal pain.

Your fascia is a vast network of connective tissue that surrounds and supports everything in your body, from your organs to your muscles. With myofascial pain, there’s a knot, or trigger point, in this tissue that pulls on your muscles, creating local and referred pain (pain that isn’t located near the trigger point).

So, if you have a muscle strain or spasm in your lower back that’s causing you no small amount of discomfort, it very well could be due to trigger points in your fascia.

To release these trigger points and their hold on your muscles, we administer an injection directly into the knot. These injections typically contain a local pain reliever and a steroid, but we’ve also found great success in using more natural ingredients, like saline and plant-based pain relievers. We’ve found that these ingredients can be just as effective as the corticosteroid injections.

The best way to figure out whether trigger point injections are the correct solution for relieving your lower back pain is to come see us for an evaluation. If we find that you might benefit from trigger point therapy, the good news is that we can administer the injections in just minutes during your visit.

For expert care of your lower back pain, including using trigger point injections, call or message  one of our locations in Waco, Arlington, Wichita Falls, or Fort Worth, Texas, today to schedule an appointment.