Conditions, in plain English.

A disc sits between two vertebrae and works like a shock absorber. When its outer wall weakens, the softer centre pushes outward. If it presses on a nerve root, you feel it in the limb that nerve serves — which is why a back problem can present as leg pain.

What it usually feels like: pain travelling below the knee or into the arm, sometimes with numbness or tingling. Often worse sitting, coughing or bending.

What helps: most herniations improve over weeks to months without surgery. Time, targeted rehabilitation, and sometimes an injection to calm the nerve while the disc settles. Surgery is considered mainly for progressive weakness, or pain that has not responded to a genuine non-surgical effort.

Not a diagnosis in itself — a description. It means the sciatic nerve, or one of the roots feeding it, is irritated somewhere. The job of a visit is to find out where and why.

What it usually feels like: a line of pain from the buttock down the back or side of the leg, sometimes to the foot. Burning, electric, or heavy rather than achy.

What helps: depends entirely on the cause. Treating “sciatica” without identifying the source is how people end up on their third failed treatment.

The canal carrying the nerves has narrowed, usually gradually and usually with age. Standing upright closes the space further; leaning forward opens it.

What it usually feels like: legs that ache, tire or feel heavy after walking a certain distance, relieved by sitting or leaning on a cart. People often notice they can walk further in a supermarket than on a flat street.

What helps: strength and conditioning work more than most people expect. Injections can help. Surgery is a real option when walking distance is genuinely limiting a life, and it is elective, not urgent, in most cases.

A misleading name. It is not a disease and it is not progressive in the way the word suggests — it describes disc changes that appear on the scans of a large share of people who have no pain at all.

What it usually feels like: back pain worse with sitting and better with movement, morning stiffness that eases.

What helps: establishing whether the disc is actually generating your pain, which imaging alone cannot tell you. Then load management, strength, and the metabolic conditions the disc is trying to heal under.

When a nerve root in the neck is irritated, symptoms follow that nerve into the shoulder, arm or hand. It is frequently mistaken for a shoulder problem, and treated as one for months.

What it usually feels like: neck pain with pain, tingling or weakness in a specific part of the arm or hand. Often worse at night.

What helps: separating neck from shoulder first. Most cases settle without surgery. Weakness that is getting worse changes the calculation and should be seen quickly.

The most common presentation in any spine practice, and the one where the honest answer is often that no single structure is to blame.

What it usually feels like: pain contained in the back, coming and going for months or years, often flaring after a lift or an awkward movement.

What helps: ruling out the things that matter, then rebuilding capacity rather than chasing pain. This is the group most poorly served by an operation and most helped by a structured, measured plan.