That is anecdotal and clear source of back pain in your story requires one big event. Mine experience is anecdotal too. For people I know, it was bad posture causing damage over time (when sitting mostly) and the physiotherapy with rehabilitation exercises helped.
> Fair enough, but do you have any actual evidence that actual physiological causes are the majority?
Do I need to do hunt for that since the original claim was "majority is psychological" was not just without proof, but with blatantly bad logic in it? "We excluded people where physical treatment helped" does not lead to results you can use about overall efficacy of any treatment.
> he's just frustrated with the current state of medicine regarding it and doesn't want his patients to go through a treatment believing they're actually treating the underlying condition. He will prescribe whatev
This honestly sounds like a bad doctor. He does not even makes attempt at diagnosing known physical causes of back pain. The physiotherapy/rehabilitation exercises that were recommended to me and people I know were simple and did helped. It required maybe 10 minutes a day.
I understand that there might be different causes and unknowns, but doctor who is not even trying being unable to improve any patients is not exactly an argument.
My PCP doesn't bother treating back pain that isn't due to an obvious injury. He said that in his decades of looking into it, he's observed:
1. None of the treatments out there show good evidence of actually working vs a placebo.
2. While it often recurs, each episode almost always resolves on its own.
He does not believe it has a psychological cause - he's just frustrated with the current state of medicine regarding it and doesn't want his patients to go through a treatment believing they're actually treating the underlying condition. He will prescribe whatever the patient asks for (pain killers, physical therapy, etc).
The only time he pays attention is when the pain extends to the legs, which is the minority of the times.