Based on personal experience, my sense is that much back pain is caused by bacteria. Obviously some people have a specific injury that causes their back pain, b

Based on personal experience, my sense is that much back pain is caused by bacteria. Obviously some people have a specific injury that causes their back pain, but I think doctors have an easier time finding the problem, when there was a specific injury. But when the pain slowly appears with aging, and has no specific cause, I suspect bacteria plays a role. As an analogy, most cases of pneumonia are caused by streptococcus pneumococcus, and most of us have this bacteria in our lungs by the time we are 5 years old, and yet the bacteria lives in our lungs for most of our lives, and it does no damage, so long as our immune system is healthy. But then one day, when we are 85 years old, the streptococcus pneumococcus becomes active and hurts us. This is after 80 years of peaceful coexistence. At one point I was looking up incidence of disease on the CDC website, and I was surprised to see that they said 1 out of 3 Americans test positive for exposure to neisseria meningitis, which can cause spinal meningitis. Only about 55 Americans a year die from this, so this is a bacteria which apparently reaches 100 million Americans but causes death in less than 0.000000001% cases. But maybe it can cause back pain? Maybe as we get older, and our immune system is less active, neisseria meningitis could cause inflammation in the spine? I once had an illness that doctors thought was Lyme disease. Among other things, it gave me agonizing back pain, so bad that I would have to lie on the couch all day, unable to move. But antibiotics fully resolved the situation. So the fact that bacteria can cause back pain is well known to me, and the fact that antibiotics can solve back pain, in some cases, is also well known to me.