A thing I get asked a lot of times by people, especially online, or call at the office and ask me questions is, how do I know when it’s real?

How do I know that my back pain is something that’s serious or that’s just going to go away? How do I know know that I need to get treated?

These are great questions, and I can tell you right now, there are quick, easy ways to know whether it’s real.

The first thing is, was it caused by an injury?

If there was something that caused it, you can directly say I was fine until this happened, then it’s real, and you need to get it checked out.

This way we can tell what the severity is and make sure it heals the right way.

If it’s something that hasn’t gone away after a week, it’s real.

If it hasn’t gone away by then, it’s not going to go away.

I’ll tell you right now, a lot of people like to say it’s just a muscle issue.

If it was a muscle strain, it will heal by itself 100% within two weeks.

If by day six, day seven, you haven’t noticed a progressive decrease in pain and feeling like it’s better, then that’s the time to be worried.

If it’s been there for months and it hasn’t gone away, you need to be worried.

This is when you need to get checked out, and you need to make sure that you get the right kind of treatment because the quicker you get it checked out, the better your results are, the better your outcome measures are, and the less likely you’re going to have to deal with permanency.

It’s always better to act sooner rather than later because the worst thing that happens if you act too soon is you find out that it was nothing to be worried about.

Don’t worry about it. Don’t stress. Just get checked out.