Do not fall into the standard method of going to a practitioner who simply takes diagnostic tests and establishes the cause of your pain through the tests alone. A clinical evaluation is the only method of determining the cause of pain. There must be an attempt to correlate a specific symptom with a specific cause. I can promise you that ten people with pain at ten different locations in their legs can be given the same diagnosis of the same herniated disc once an MRI finds the same disc herniated. The fact that their symptoms are completely different (which would certainly suggest different causes) will be completely ignored if the MRI finding is the only method for establishing cause.

Attempt to make sense of your symptoms. If the pain is at the lower back or gluteal region not directly on the spine, I would suggest that the tissue causing your pain is muscular. If pain is at a joint, don't simply accept if an x-ray or MRI was taken that you have arthritis causing your pain. The determining factor of whether arthritis is causing pain at a joint is based on specific clinical tests not diagnostic tests. Don't take medication for pain as a treatment protocol. Cortisone shots are a ridiculous response to pain at a joint. It simply masks the symptoms and in my experience the pain returns pretty quickly. Don't accept the concept that the key to resolving your pain is stopping any activity that incites your pain. Buying a new bed, a pillow, sleeping on a recliner are all responses that will never address the cause of pain. Establish the cause and resolve it.

The best thing I can offer as advice is to search out a medical practitioner who can not only explain what tissue is causing the pain signal you are experiencing but how he or she knows that it is not coming form other tissues in the same area.