Waking up with stiffness in your lower back that lingers for hours. Bending to pick something off the floor and experiencing a sharp pain. An aching back after standing for long periods. These aren’t just signs of aging — they’re symptoms of spinal degeneration, and they’re affecting your quality of life.
May is Arthritis Awareness Month, and if these scenarios sound familiar, it’s time to learn more about one of the most common yet overlooked forms of arthritis: spinal osteoarthritis and the degenerative changes it causes in your back. Eric Fanaee, MD, and our team specialize in pain management, including offering effective nonsurgical treatments.
Your spine consists of vertebral bones cushioned by spinal discs and connected by facet joints. Over time, the cartilage protecting your facet joints wears down. The bones begin to rub together — causing the pain, stiffness, and swelling characteristic of osteoarthritis.
Your spinal discs also lose water content and height as you age, which reduces their shock-absorbing capacity. Ligaments in your back can grow thicker, and bone spurs can develop where your body tries to protect areas of instability. This degenerative cascade creates inflammation, nerve compression, and, all too often, chronic pain.
The good news is that surgery isn’t your only option. Dr. Fanaee and our team specialize in pain management, and we can recommend a range of nonsurgical spine treatments to effectively manage arthritis-related degeneration and chronic back pain.
Here are five evidence-based approaches that can help you find relief.
For many people, physical therapy is the foundation of effective back pain management. It involves carefully prescribed exercises to strengthen your core muscles that support your spine and improve flexibility in tight muscles and ligaments.
Physical therapy helps take pressure off of degenerative joints by teaching you proper body mechanics that protect your back, too.
Physical therapy can also include manual therapy techniques, where your therapist uses hands-on approaches to mobilize stiff joints and release muscle tension. The exercises you learn become tools you can use for life, helping you manage your condition long-term.
Medication plays an important role in managing arthritis-related back pain. You might benefit from anti-inflammatory medications that reduce swelling around degenerative joints and compressed nerves. Muscle relaxants help when spasms contribute to your pain.
In some cases, we prescribe medications specifically designed to treat nerve pain that stems from compression or irritation. We customize your medication regimen based on your pain patterns, other health conditions, and potential side effects.
The goal is effective pain control with minimal impact on your daily function and overall health.
When arthritis in your facet joints causes persistent pain despite other treatments, radiofrequency ablation could offer targeted relief. It’s a nonsurgical, minimally invasive procedure that uses heat generated by radio waves to temporarily interrupt the nerves transmitting pain signals from your arthritic joints to your brain.
During the procedure, Dr. Fanaee uses imaging guidance to position a thin needle near the specific nerves causing your pain. He sends radiofrequency energy through the needle, creating a controlled lesion that stops the nerve from sending pain signals.
Radiofrequency ablation can deliver significant pain reduction in certain cases. You may achieve meaningful pain relief that can last six months to two years — and you can repeat it if your pain returns.
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) represents an innovative approach to treating degenerative spine conditions. We draw a small amount of your blood, process it to concentrate the platelets and growth factors, and then inject your enriched plasma into damaged areas of your spine.
The concentrated growth factors stimulate your body’s natural healing processes, which may help reduce inflammation in arthritic joints, promote tissue repair in degenerative discs, and strengthen damaged ligaments.
Unlike medications that simply mask symptoms, PRP therapy supports tissue regeneration. You may need multiple treatments, and results develop gradually over weeks to months, but many patients experience meaningful, lasting improvement in their chronic back pain.
When nerve compression from spinal degeneration causes radiating pain, numbness, or weakness, epidural steroid injections can offer powerful relief. Dr. Fanaee uses imaging guidance to inject corticosteroids into the epidural space surrounding your spinal cord and nerve roots to fight inflammation at the source.
The medication reduces inflammation and swelling that’s compressing nerves, providing relief that allows you to participate more effectively in physical therapy and other treatments. While the injections don’t reverse degeneration, they can provide weeks to months of significant pain reduction.
Chronic back pain is complex, but Dr. Fanaee and our team are dedicated to helping you find a treatment plan that works. These five treatments often work best in combination, and we tailor your program to fit your needs.
You might start with physical therapy and medication, add epidural injections when needed for acute flare-ups, and consider radiofrequency ablation or PRP therapy for longer-lasting relief.
This Arthritis Awareness Month, don’t accept chronic back pain as inevitable. Contact our team to explore which nonsurgical and minimally invasive treatments can help you manage spinal degeneration and reclaim a pain-free life.
