181: The Relaxback UK Show with Mike Dilke - Episode 181181: The Relaxback UK Show with Mike Dilke - Episode 181
UK Health Radio Podcast
The episode focuses on chronic back pain, from everyday causes and diagnosis challenges to a detailed look at vertebrogenic back pain and the Intracept procedure. Dr David McKean explains the science and evidence, while Emma Fletcher shares how the treatment reduced her pain and helped her return to an active life.
39:08•8 Sept 2026
Beating Chronic Back Pain: From Everyday Strain to the Intracept Procedure
Episode Overview
- Back pain is extremely common, affecting around 60% of people in the UK at some point and costing the economy billions through healthcare use and lost productivity.
- There are many possible causes of back pain, so careful assessment, attention to red-flag symptoms and appropriate imaging such as MRI are key to getting a useful diagnosis.
- Staying active, strengthening core and paraspinal muscles and trying conservative treatments are important first steps for most people with back pain.
- Vertebrogenic back pain, associated with Modic changes on MRI and the basivertebral nerve, may respond to the Intracept procedure, which uses radiofrequency ablation to reduce pain signals.
- Data from long-term use in the US suggest that Intracept can give lasting relief for many patients, though it does not help everyone and is not yet widely available on the NHS.
“I walked out of there… with a pain level that was, say, a nine down to about three, and it just got better and better.”
What makes chronic back pain so stubborn, and what happens when standard advice like “keep moving and take physio” just doesn’t cut it? This episode of The Relaxback UK Show zeroes in on back pain with a mix of medical detail and real-life experience. Host Mike Dilk chats with Dr David McKean, a specialist in spinal pain, and Emma Fletcher, a former chronic back pain sufferer whose life has been changed by a newer procedure called Intracept.
You’ll hear just how widespread the problem is: Dr McKean notes that low back pain affects around 60% of people in the UK at some point, and that chronic pain costs the economy billions each year. He explains why diagnosis is tricky – “there’s a huge number of different things” that can cause pain – and walks through red-flag symptoms, the role of MRI scans, and why getting the right radiologist matters. The conversation then gets very practical.
Dr McKean stresses that most people benefit from keeping active, strengthening core muscles and trying conservative treatments first. But for a subset of patients with vertebrogenic back pain and specific MRI changes (Modic changes), a different approach may help. That’s where Intracept comes in. Dr McKean describes how a curved needle is guided into the vertebra to heat and “deaden” the basivertebral nerve using radiofrequency energy.
It sounds a bit industrial, especially when Emma laughs that “he did say he had to get the bigger hammer out because my bone was too strong,” yet she reports being heavily sedated, feeling no pain during the procedure and walking out the same day. A year on, Emma says her pain has dropped from “a nine down to about three” within 24 hours and that she’s back to bending, training and living normally.
The episode doesn’t claim this is a miracle fix for everyone, but it gives hope, data and some clear questions to ask if your back pain is dragging on and you’re wondering what options exist beyond yet another packet of painkillers. Could this be the conversation that helps you frame your next chat with a doctor?
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