Almost everyone will have one or more back problems in their lifetime. If you're lucky, it will be a relatively short-lived affair that resolves itself in spite of you efforts to help - bed rest, analgesics, massage, hot/cold pads, physical therapy and the rest. If you're unlucky, you'll be spending a lot of time at the doctor's, the physical therapist, and maybe the acupuncturist, the chiropracter,and the Pilates instructor's studio. In more extreme cases, you'll come under the knife, or at least the keyhole instruments that are becoming fashionable.

Now a study done at the University of Washington in Seattle, and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has shown that healthcare expenditure for back and neck problems have increased a lot, without much improvement in healing results. The costs actually increased 65% from 1997 to 2005, after adjustment for inflation. The average costs for someone with spinal problems was $4,695 in 1997, compared with those for someone without such a problem - $2,731. in 2005, the corresponding numbers were $6,096 vs. $3,515. But measurements show that functional disability and work limitations have not improved, while the numbers affected with functional limitations increased from 21% to 25%.

The increasing costs and numbers of persons afflicted with functional limitations reflect the inadequacy of treatments offered.

Remember, most back pain gets better with a few weeks of home treatment. Over-the-counter pain relievers may be all that's needed to improve the pain. A short period of bed rest is permissible, but more than a couple of days actually may do more harm than good. If you are worried, your doctor can order imaging studies (X-rays, MRI ) to see if there's aserious cause of your trouble. You can also be supplied with more powerful pain-killers, but they aren't necessary in most cases.