<P> It is not clear whether men or women have higher rates of low back pain . A 2012 review reported a rate of 9.6% among males and 8.7% among females . Another 2012 review found a higher rate in females than males, which the reviewers felt was possibly due to greater rates of pains due to osteoporosis, menstruation, and pregnancy among women, or possibly because women were more willing to report pain than men . An estimated 70% of women experience back pain during pregnancy with the rate being higher the further along in pregnancy . Current smokers--and especially those who are adolescents--are more likely to have low back pain than former smokers, and former smokers are more likely to have low back pain than those who have never smoked . </P> <P> Low back pain has been with humans since at least the Bronze Age . The oldest known surgical treatise--the Edwin Smith Papyrus, dating to about 1500 BCE--describes a diagnostic test and treatment for a vertebral sprain . Hippocrates (c. 460 BCE--c. 370 BCE) was the first to use a term for sciatic pain and low back pain; Galen (active mid to late second century CE) described the concept in some detail . Physicians through the end of the first millennium did not attempt back surgery and recommended watchful waiting . Through the Medieval period, folk medicine practitioners provided treatments for back pain based on the belief that it was caused by spirits . </P> <P> At the start of the 20th century, physicians thought low back pain was caused by inflammation of or damage to the nerves, with neuralgia and neuritis frequently mentioned by them in the medical literature of the time . The popularity of such proposed causes decreased during the 20th century . In the early 20th century, American neurosurgeon Harvey Williams Cushing increased the acceptance of surgical treatments for low back pain . In the 1920s and 1930s, new theories of the cause arose, with physicians proposing a combination of nervous system and psychological disorders such as nerve weakness (neurasthenia) and female hysteria . Muscular rheumatism (now called fibromyalgia) was also cited with increasing frequency . </P> <P> Emerging technologies such as X-rays gave physicians new diagnostic tools, revealing the intervertebral disc as a source for back pain in some cases . In 1938, orthopedic surgeon Joseph S. Barr reported on cases of disc - related sciatica improved or cured with back surgery . As a result of this work, in the 1940s, the vertebral disc model of low back pain took over, dominating the literature through the 1980s, aiding further by the rise of new imaging technologies such as CT and MRI . The discussion subsided as research showed disc problems to be a relatively uncommon cause of the pain . Since then, physicians have come to realize that it is unlikely that a specific cause for low back pain can be identified in many cases and question the need to find one at all as most of the time symptoms resolve within 6 to 12 weeks regardless of treatment . </P>

Approximately 40 of the population will experience lower back pain at some point in their lives