Burning pain and tingling in the thoracic spine

[Krugg]

Greetings, the pain started when I was 15, the time around which I started using desktops. I would sit for hours with bad posture and things. Anyways, 3 years ago I went to a rheumatologist and he x-ray diagnosed me with a mild scoliosis and kyphosis and prescribed me a couple of strength exercises and stretches, which helped my kyphosis but not my scoliosis I think. The pain is slowly getting worse over time. I cannot remain static in ANY position without pain around my T6 and T5, but especially positions that put a lot of load on my back, sitting for example. I like to sit with good posture now, but the pain, is still there. If I ignore the pain, it'll get worse and worse until it turns into tingling (which only started recently btw, about 3 months ago). Sometimes I do feel tingling, but not pain, around my left rotator cuff. I did a new x-ray recently on my SI joint and will get the results soon. But I think this doctor doesn't know what he's doing--"it's probably because of college"... hm. Thanks for all the help friends. Appreciated

[HereNow2day]

A lot of back pain is caused by stress.  When the stress gets bad you can actually worry more about your condition than the problem itself.  This causes additional tightness of muscles and can even cause kyphosis due to the stress or the "fight or flight" syndrome setting in (look it up).  Your scoliosis can also present with tightened back muscles.

I think you are at a point where this might be happening.  There is an epidemic of spine problems in the US and Western world, which, up until modern imaging, did not exist, but only in the rarest of cases.

You are young.  Don't you think it odd that people seventy, eighty and ninety, even, are walking about pain free with stoop shoulderes?  After millions of years of evolution, why is the modern spine giving out?  Answer: it isn't.

My suggestion is to keep active doing your normal things, do not focus on the exercises specifically designed to help with your problem, work on your anxiety and change things in life that stress you.  The more you focus on the area the worse it will get.  It is like trying to not think of the color pink when told not to think about it.

When you are in a lot of pain, yes, take a pain pill, but the real key is to understand the cause of the problem, which is probably the stress of a student (or worker) in a not so great work environment with bills to pay and lots of deadlines to meet.

[Dr. Kokil Mathur]

Along with pain killers, you can also look for alternative therapies. One such method is wearing specially designed corsets to hold your spine in place while you move around. Restricting the spine movement at the desired points also reduces the pain. Manual traction and physiotherapy too is often helpful in managing the pain by strengthening the back muscles. Also sometimes a heating pad or a hot water bottle helps ease the tired muscles. Please discuss these options with your treating doctor. Trying out these possibilities may reduce your need for narcotic pain medications. Also, their dose can be reduced by adding some non-narcotic pain killer to the prescription. Please also discuss this. Take care!