You hear a lot about people hurting their upper back and their lower back. How come we don’t hear as much about the middle part of the back?

The spine is divided into several sections: the neck and uppermost part is the cervical spine, the mid-back is the thoracic spine, the lower back is the lumbar spine, and the bottom part is the sacral area.

The two most fragile parts of the back are the cervical spine and the lumbar spine. The neck is subject to a lot of twisting, turning, and is easily injured when you stop suddenly and jerk your head forward and back quickly, as with whiplash. The lumbar spine can be easily injured because of its heavy load. It not only bears the load of your upper body, it bears the weight of anything you are holding and how you hold it can add to the weight and strain of the spine. At the same time, the lumbar spine has the stress of twisting and turning, plus the weight of your body and what you may be carrying.

The sacral area is most often hurt because of an injury – a fall down the stairs or on ice, for example. The thoracic spine is the one with the least number of injuries because of its location. It has the strongest base of the spine. However, this isn’t to say that injuries don’t occur. Many people have pulled muscles in their midback and the spine can become injured through trauma, disease, or something congenital, that you’re born with.