Degenerative disc disease sounds like a diagnosis that ends your lifting days, but it usually describes ordinary wear that shows up on scans in people who have no pain at all. Arthritis in the back usually means the small facet joints are wearing instead of the disc. Different tissue, different pattern, and the two often show up together.
What Is Degenerative Disc Disease?
Your discs sit between each vertebra and act like shock absorbers. Over the years they lose water content and flatten out. A flatter, drier disc does not absorb load as well, and the space where a nerve exits the spine can get tighter. People usually notice a deep stiffness or ache after sitting too long, pain that builds with bending, or in some cases pain, numbness, or tingling running down an arm or leg when a nerve gets irritated.
What speeds this up is not one thing. Genetics plays a large role, and that part is out of anyone’s control. Discs do not have their own direct blood supply, so they depend on movement and loading to stay healthy. Years of sitting still seem to be about as hard on a disc as years of heavy, repeated bending and twisting under load. An old injury to the vertebra, say a fracture from a fall or a car accident, can also change how a disc gets loaded afterward and speed up wear at that level. How much any of this matters for you depends on how many discs are affected and whether a nerve is being pinched along with the wear.
What Is Arthritis in the Back?
Arthritis in the back usually means the facet joints, the small paired joints at the back of each vertebra that let your spine bend, extend, and twist. Cartilage inside those joints thins with time, the joint stiffens, and small bone spurs can form at the edges. This tends to feel like stiffness that is worst first thing in the morning or after sitting still for a while. It often loosens up once you start moving, then tightens again by the end of the day. Pain with arching backward or twisting, and aching that spreads into the buttock or back of the thigh, are both common.
Like disc wear, facet joint changes show up on scans of plenty of people who have no pain at all, so a finding on an X-ray or MRI does not automatically explain your symptoms. What this needs depends on how many joint levels are involved and how much of the stiffness comes from the joint itself versus the muscles guarding around it. Joint mobilization for this kind of stiffness is graded: it starts with gentle oscillation and only moves toward firmer manipulation once the tissue shows it can handle more. Going straight to an aggressive adjustment on a joint that is still guarded tends to backfire.
Can You Have Both at Once?
Yes, and it is common. The disc and the two facet joints behind it share the load at every level of the spine. When a disc loses height, the facet joints behind it carry more than they were built for, and they tend to wear faster as a result. The usual order is that the disc degenerates first, and facet joint changes follow as the spine adjusts to the altered load. That sequence is part of why so many people end up with some of both.
Because the symptoms overlap so much, you cannot reliably sort out which one is driving your pain by how it feels alone. A small number of symptoms do need prompt attention no matter which structure is involved: progressive weakness in a leg, numbness in the groin or saddle area, or any change in bladder or bowel control. Those are signs to get checked right away, not something to wait out.
Degenerative Disc Disease vs Arthritis: Side by Side
| Degenerative Disc Disease | Arthritis (Facet Joints) | |
|---|---|---|
| What breaks down | The disc between vertebrae loses height and hydration | Cartilage inside the small spinal joints wears thin |
| Typical pattern | Ache after sitting or loading the spine, may radiate into an arm or leg if a nerve is irritated | Stiffness worse first thing in the morning, eases once moving, then returns later in the day |
| What it depends on | How many discs are affected and whether a nerve is being compressed along with the wear | How many joint levels are involved and how much of the stiffness comes from guarding muscle |
| Daily upkeep | Regular movement and posture habits that avoid long static compression on the disc | Consistent mobility work to keep the joint from stiffening further between sessions |
| When to get it checked | Pain starts radiating, numbness appears, or stiffness is not easing with normal activity | Morning stiffness lasts longer, or stiffness starts limiting normal daily movement |
How Do You Know Which One You Have, and What Helps?
Imaging can confirm that disc wear or facet changes are there, but it cannot tell you on its own whether those changes are what is causing your pain. Plenty of people with worn-looking scans feel fine, and plenty of people with clean scans still hurt. The more useful question is how your spine actually moves, where it is restricted, and which tissues react when we test them directly. That is why every evaluation at Function Performance starts with an assessment of how a patient moves and which tissues are contributing to the problem, not just the label on a prior scan.
Treatment is not one thing either. Chiropractic adjustments can help a stiff, guarded joint move again, but adjusting the same spot over and over without changing why it keeps getting stuck does not fix the underlying problem. It is not just a weak core or tight hamstrings either. Those get blamed for every sore back, and they are rarely the whole story. What tends to help is restoring the movement that is missing with graded joint mobilization and techniques like Active Release Technique, calming an irritated nerve with nerve mobilization when that is part of the picture, and reinforcing progress with a structured home program between visits. If you are dealing with ongoing back pain and are not sure whether it is disc related, joint related, or both, we can start with a hands-on assessment at Function Performance, 512 7th Street, Oregon City, OR, 97045. We see patients from Milwaukie, Gladstone, Canby, West Linn, Beavercreek, Lake Oswego, Wilsonville, Happy Valley, Molalla, and Oregon City. Call (503) 730-2788, Monday through Thursday 8am to 6pm or Friday 8am to 1pm.
