Low Back Pain: What Helped You Is What Research Needs to Know

Every figure in this guide comes from a published source, linked where it appears and kept in CureCircle's evidence base with the source's own words. It is not medical advice. Read on 7 November 2026.

Low back pain is the most common pain there is, and the one where people try the most things: rest, movement, physiotherapy, painkillers, massage, a new mattress, injections. What actually helped, after how long, and what made it come back is rarely written down anywhere. Guidelines advise against routine scans, so the person's own account is the main record of the condition, and that account, gathered from many people, is what research on back pain needs.

How many people live with it

According to the WHO, "in 2020, low back pain (LBP) affected 619 million people globally". A Global Burden of Disease analysis counted approximately 266.9 million new incident cases in 2021.

The records worth keeping

NICE's guideline on low back pain and sciatica describes how care is recorded:

• A risk questionnaire: NICE suggests a risk assessment tool such as STarT Back at the first contact for each new episode. Its score guides how much support you are offered.
• Few scans: NICE says not to routinely offer imaging in a non-specialist setting, and in specialist care only if the result is likely to change management. If you had an MRI, its report is worth keeping.

Because so little else is measured, your own notes carry the most information: when an episode started, what you were doing, how bad it was day by day, and what you tried. If you do not have your clinic letters or scan reports, ask your practice for a copy.

What sharing it is worth

CureCircle values every contribution with a public benchmark built from what health data has sold for. A complete back pain story comes to about $70 per licence on the benchmark today. With 60 days of pain diary entries added, it comes to about $214 per licence, because a day-by-day record linked to what was tried is evidence research rarely gets. Every line and its source is on the back pain page.

A licence is not a one-off sale: the same de-identified story can be licensed to several research teams, and you earn a share each time.

How to share it

You start by writing what you live with in your own words; a few quick questions follow, then an AI interviewer asks about the details only you know, and you rate every treatment you tried. You can add clinic letters, scan reports and pages of a pain diary as PDFs or photos, and the AI reads them into your own medical file. Before anything is shared, you read the de-identified summary and decide.

Start your story, or read what your health data is worth first.