Pain is a symptom, not the cause. It's an alarm, not the fire.
Across clinics and kitchen tables alike, back pain has long been treated as a condition to manage rather than a problem to solve — a recurring inconvenience met with medication and resignation. Yet physiotherapists and osteopaths are increasingly clear: pain is not the disease, but the body's distress signal, and silencing it without tracing its origin is a choice to let deeper dysfunction quietly compound. The real story of back pain is written not in the place that hurts, but in the biomechanical patterns — posture, muscle balance, movement — that were never corrected, and whose consequences accumulate long before imaging can name them.
- Millions of people treat recurring back pain with anti-inflammatories and rest, never realizing they are managing a symptom while the underlying cause continues to erode the spine.
- The body's connected architecture means the site of pain is often far removed from its true origin — a postural habit or muscle imbalance elsewhere in the system quietly overloading structures never meant to bear that weight.
- Each untreated cycle of pain allows structural damage to deepen: joints wear, discs degenerate, ligaments strain — changes that appear on scans as the problem but are in fact the accumulated cost of dysfunction ignored.
- Experts urge that even mild, intermittent pain be taken seriously, as the window for addressing root causes narrows the longer biomechanical dysfunction is left to evolve into chronic, mobility-limiting conditions.
You wake up with a twinge in your lower back, take something for it, feel better by afternoon, and move on. A week later it returns. Then again the month after. Most people accept this cycle as simply the nature of back pain — something to manage, not something to fix.
But according to physiotherapist and osteopath Laudelino Risso, that assumption is the core of the problem. Pain, he explains, is a warning signal, not a cause — like a fever, or an alarm. Treating it without understanding what triggered it is like silencing the alarm without checking for the fire.
The place where you hurt is often not where the problem lives. A sharp pain in the lower back may originate from posture, gait, muscle imbalances, or how the entire skeletal system distributes force during movement. When one part of this connected system falls out of balance, another part absorbs the excess load — and over time, that load compounds into structural damage: arthritis, disc degeneration, ligament strain. These findings look like the root cause on a scan, but they are actually the consequence of a dysfunction that began much earlier and was never addressed.
The most common mistake is treating only the symptom. Relief from medication returns the patient to their routine, but if the underlying biomechanical problem persists, the pain will return — and each cycle allows the damage to deepen. The body may eventually adapt, making pain feel more tolerable, but function quietly declines and mobility erodes.
Risso is direct: even mild, recurring pain deserves investigation. Dismissing a dull ache as aging or managing it indefinitely with occasional medication is a choice to let the problem evolve unchecked. The longer the dysfunction remains unaddressed, the more likely it is to become chronic, to spread, and to compromise not just comfort but the freedom to move through daily life.
You wake up with a twinge in your lower back. It's annoying but manageable. You take an anti-inflammatory, feel better by afternoon, and move on with your day. The pain returns a week later. Then again the month after that. Each time you treat it the same way, and each time it comes back.
This cycle is so common that most people assume it's simply the nature of back pain—something you manage, not something you fix. But according to Laudelino Risso, a physiotherapist and osteopath who runs a network of clinics, this approach is fundamentally backwards. Pain, he explains, is not a cause. It's a warning signal, like a fever. Treating the pain without understanding what triggered it is like silencing an alarm without checking the fire.
The real problem is that the place where you hurt is often not where the problem lives. A sharp pain in your lower back might have nothing to do with your lower back at all. It could originate from your posture, the way you walk, the strength or weakness of specific muscle groups, or how your entire skeletal system distributes force when you move. The body is a connected system, and when one part falls out of balance, another part pays the price. Over time, that payment compounds.
Risso describes this as a biomechanical failure. When your body's movement patterns aren't functioning properly, it begins to overload certain structures—joints, ligaments, discs—beyond what they're designed to handle. This overload is silent at first. You might not feel anything. But eventually, the wear accumulates. Imaging studies show arthritis, degeneration, ligament strain. These findings look like the problem, but they're actually the consequence of something that went wrong much earlier, something that was never addressed.
This is where diagnosis becomes critical. Many people receive scans showing structural damage and assume that's the root cause. But Risso argues that if your spine has deteriorated to that point, the deterioration itself is evidence of a prior dysfunction. The real challenge is working backward to find what wasn't functioning well in the first place—the postural habit, the muscle imbalance, the movement pattern that set the whole cascade in motion.
The most common mistake is treating only the symptom. A patient experiences pain, takes medication, feels relief, and returns to their normal routine. But if the underlying biomechanical problem persists, the pain will return. And when it does, people often repeat the same treatment, expecting a different result. What they don't realize is that each cycle of untreated dysfunction allows the structural damage to deepen. The body may eventually adapt, making the pain feel more tolerable, but the underlying condition continues to worsen. Mobility decreases. Function declines. Quality of life erodes.
Risso emphasizes that even mild, persistent pain deserves attention. A dull ache that comes and goes is the body's way of saying something needs investigation. Ignoring it—dismissing it as just part of getting older, or something you'll manage with occasional medication—is a choice to let the problem evolve unchecked. The longer the biomechanical dysfunction remains unaddressed, the more likely it is to become chronic, to spread to other parts of the spine, and to eventually compromise not just comfort but the ability to move freely through daily life.
Citas Notables
Pain is a symptom, not the cause. It functions like a fever—an alert from the body. There is always a factor behind it that needs to be identified.— Laudelino Risso, physiotherapist and osteopath
When biomechanical dynamics aren't functioning properly, the body begins to overload certain structures. Over time, this leads to wear and pain.— Laudelino Risso
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
So if the pain isn't where the problem is, how do you actually find what's wrong?
You have to look at the whole system. How someone stands, walks, sits at a desk for eight hours. Whether their left hip is higher than their right. Whether their core muscles are doing their job or if other muscles are compensating. It's detective work.
But doesn't an MRI show you what's damaged?
It shows you the damage, yes. But damage is the end result, not the beginning. By the time you see arthritis on a scan, the dysfunction that caused it has been running for years, usually silently.
So people are treating the symptom and ignoring the cause, and then they're surprised when it comes back.
Exactly. They get relief from the pain and think they're fixed. But the thing that created the pain is still there, still working, still breaking things down.
What happens if someone keeps ignoring a persistent mild pain?
The body adapts. The pain becomes less noticeable, so people think it's resolved. But underneath, the structures are degenerating. Eventually you lose range of motion, strength, stability. The pain was actually the early warning.
So the pain is doing you a favor.
It's trying to. Most people just don't listen.