If your MRI looked “normal,” surgery was not recommended, and physical therapy did not give you lasting relief, why does your back still hurt?

In this episode, we explore a missing piece in chronic mechanical low back pain: the multifidus muscle. The multifidus is a deep spinal stabilizing muscle that helps control small movements of the lumbar spine. After a back injury, disc irritation, or spinal pain episode, the nervous system can reflexively shut this muscle down through a process called arthrogenic muscle inhibition. For some patients, that signal does not fully turn back on — even after the original injury has healed.

This conversation breaks down why chronic back pain is not always explained by MRI findings, why “mild degenerative changes” may not tell the whole story, and why years of physical therapy may not fully resolve pain when the multifidus muscle is inhibited at the spinal cord level. You’ll also learn how restorative neurostimulation with ReActiv8® is designed to directly stimulate the motor nerve connected to the multifidus, helping restore neuromuscular control over time.

We discuss who ReActiv8® may be designed for, how it differs from spinal cord stimulation, what the outpatient implant procedure involves, and how a simple in-office prone instability test may help identify whether multifidus dysfunction is contributing to chronic mechanical low back pain.

At Vertrae® in Dayton, Ohio, Dr. Kamal Woods, MD, MBA personally evaluates patients to determine whether ReActiv8® may be appropriate based on their pain pattern, history, prior treatments, and clinical exam findings.

Listen to learn why your pain may not be a failure of effort — and how the right evaluation may uncover a mechanism that standard imaging can miss.

Visit Vertrae.com to learn more or request an evaluation.