How your back works
Vertebrae, discs, facet joints, curves and the muscles that hold them.
3 guides · updated 4 Oct 2026 · every claim sourced
How your spine is built
How your spine is built: vertebrae, discs, joints, ligaments and muscles. What each part does, why the spine is strong, and why scans can mislead.
2 min read · Moderate evidenceMore in How your back works
How the spine changes with age
Disc degeneration appears in 37% of pain-free twenty-year-olds and 96% of eighty-year-olds. Most of what a scan calls degeneration is ordinary ageing.
2 min readConditionThe cervical spine
The cervical spine is seven vertebrae that hold and move your head. How the neck is built, why screens load it, and what research says about neck pain.
2 min readAbout this topic
Understanding how the back is built makes back pain less frightening. This section explains the anatomy of the spine in plain language: the neck, upper and lower back, the vertebrae, discs, joints, ligaments, nerves and the muscles that move and support them. It also covers how the spine changes with age, and why changes such as disc wear show up on scans of people with no pain at all. The theme throughout is that the spine is strong and adaptable, built to move and carry load in many positions, and that strength, movement and gradual loading keep it healthy.
- Strong consistent results from trials and reviews
- Moderate good studies, some gaps
- Limited few or small studies
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