yes, deep muscle ache can be all neuro. though muscle and nerve stretching and seriously deep tissue massage would be help clarify.toolonglegs wrote:Just to clarify... No shooting pains and no numbness... Just a deep muscle type ache.
Sore in the fleshy muscle just below and behind the knee. Deep in the rear of the thigh which I can massage a bit by digging deep. Also deep in the butt. Nothing like my previous issues.
your back stiffness would improve a lot with the stuff I mentioned above.
the discs start to harden in your late 40s. but pain can come from vertebrae end plates (the top and bottom surfaces that sandwich the disc).
end plates can go through two phases of degeneration recognized on MRI, called Modic Type I and II. The first tends to be more painful, and the pain is generally in the lower back, not the butt or legs, though referred pain is also possible.
anyway, in general most low back pain improves with all the lifestyle improvements I've mentioned so often, and the exercises.
the problem with backs is they don't get great blood flow, esp if you are sedentary or do repetitive bending over/lifting.
in the absence of good blood flow, you get poor tissue repair....hence the back tends to wear out well before other tissue in westerners.