Lumbago, essentially, comes from Latin and it means, or at least physicians use it to denote pain stemming from the low back. We kind of lump that together and we say lumbago is low back pain

To be more precise, it should be broken down into axial back pain, in other words pain that remains in the spine and doesn't radiate down the legs, or radicular pain, which most people refer to as sciatica. But lumbago is a general term denoting low back pain.

Dr. Zinovy Meyler is a physiatrist with over a decade of experience specializing in the non-surgical care of spine, muscle, and chronic pain conditions. He is the Co-Director of the Interventional Spine Program at the Princeton Spine and Joint Center.

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