Bone spurs on the spine are small projections of extra bone that grow along the edges of your vertebrae, usually where cartilage or disc tissue has worn down over time. They’re extremely common as you age. Roughly 80% of people over 60 show signs of spinal disc degeneration on imaging, and bone spurs are one of the hallmark features of that process. Many people have them without ever knowing it, while others develop pain, numbness, or weakness when the growths press on nearby nerves or narrow the spinal canal.
Why Bone Spurs Form
Your spine is designed to absorb shock and bend in multiple directions. The discs between each vertebra act as cushions, and the joints along the back of the spine allow smooth movement. Over years of use, those discs lose water content and height, and the cartilage in the joints gradually wears thinner. This creates instability: the vertebrae shift slightly more than they should during everyday bending and twisting.
Your body responds to that instability by laying down new bone at the edges of the vertebrae. This is the bone spur, or osteophyte. It’s essentially your skeleton trying to stabilize a loose segment. Research on cadaveric spines confirms this: removing bone spurs from vertebrae reduced their resistance to bending forces by 35% to 49%, depending on the direction of movement. In other words, the spurs were doing real structural work. They appear to be your body’s attempt at a repair job, not just random overgrowth.
The most common triggers for this process include age-related disc degeneration, osteoarthritis of the spinal joints, and repetitive stress from heavy or awkward lifting. Obesity accelerates the process by increasing the load your spine carries every day.
Where They Develop and What That Means
Bone spurs can form anywhere along the spine, but the two most common locations are the cervical spine (neck) and the lumbar spine (lower back). These are the regions with the most movement and the most wear over a lifetime. The symptoms you experience depend heavily on where the spurs are and what structures they’re pressing against.
Cervical Spine (Neck)
Spurs in the neck can compress nerve roots as they exit the spinal column, causing pain, tingling, or weakness that radiates into the shoulders, arms, or hands. In rare cases, cervical bone spurs grow large enough to compress or narrow the esophagus, which can cause chronic coughing, a choking sensation, or difficulty swallowing. This is sometimes the unsuspected cause of swallowing problems that don’t respond to other treatments.
Lumbar Spine (Lower Back)
In the lower back, bone spurs often contribute to a condition called spinal stenosis, where the spinal canal narrows and squeezes the bundle of nerves running through it. The classic symptom pattern is called neurogenic claudication: pain, heaviness, numbness, or tingling in one or both buttocks and legs that gets worse with walking or standing and improves when you sit down or lean forward. Bending forward opens up the spinal canal slightly, which takes pressure off the nerves. That’s why people with lumbar stenosis from bone spurs often find it easier to push a shopping cart (which keeps them leaning forward) than to walk upright.
In more severe or long-standing cases, lumbar spurs can cause measurable muscle weakness in the legs, loss of balance from impaired nerve signaling, and in rare situations, loss of bladder or bowel control.
When Bone Spurs Cause No Symptoms
This is one of the most important things to understand: many spinal bone spurs are completely silent. They show up on X-rays or MRIs taken for other reasons, and the person has no pain or functional problems at all. A bone spur only becomes a clinical issue when it presses on a nerve root, narrows the spinal canal, or restricts joint movement enough to cause pain. Finding a bone spur on imaging doesn’t automatically explain your symptoms, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you need treatment.
How They’re Found
Bone spurs themselves are visible on standard X-rays, which show the bony projections clearly along the edges of the vertebrae. But X-rays can’t show soft tissues like nerves, discs, or the spinal cord. If your symptoms suggest nerve compression, an MRI is typically the next step because it reveals how much the spurs are encroaching on the spinal canal or nerve exit points. CT scans offer detailed bone imaging and are sometimes used when MRI isn’t an option or when a surgeon needs precise measurements before a procedure.
The diagnosis is usually straightforward when imaging findings match your symptom pattern. The challenge is when they don’t. Plenty of people have large bone spurs with no symptoms, and some people have significant pain with only modest changes on imaging.
Managing Pain and Function
Since bone spurs are your body’s response to instability, the goal of treatment isn’t usually to remove the spurs themselves. Instead, the focus is on managing the symptoms they cause and keeping you as active and functional as possible.
Physical therapy is a cornerstone of treatment. A therapist can teach you exercises that open up the spinal canal, strengthen the muscles supporting your spine, and improve flexibility without aggravating nerve compression. For people with lumbar stenosis, cycling is often recommended over walking because the forward-leaning position is easier on compressed nerves. Activities that involve heavy, awkward, or repetitive lifting are generally discouraged because they increase spinal load and can worsen symptoms.
Supportive equipment matters too. Using chairs with good lumbar support, sleeping on a mattress that maintains spinal alignment, and modifying your workstation can reduce the daily stress on affected segments of your spine. These sound like small changes, but they add up over the course of a day.
Anti-inflammatory medications can help during flare-ups by reducing swelling around compressed nerves. Steroid injections near the affected nerve roots are another option when oral medications aren’t enough, providing temporary relief that can last weeks to months.
When Surgery Becomes an Option
Surgery is generally reserved for cases where conservative treatment hasn’t worked after several months, or where nerve compression is causing progressive weakness, balance problems, or loss of bladder or bowel control. The most common procedures involve removing the bone spur and any other tissue that’s compressing the nerve (a decompression surgery), sometimes combined with fusing two vertebrae together to stabilize the segment.
Recovery from spinal decompression surgery typically involves several weeks of limited activity followed by a graduated physical therapy program. Most people notice improvement in leg symptoms relatively quickly, though numbness or weakness that has been present for a long time may take months to fully resolve, and in some cases, nerve damage from prolonged compression doesn’t completely reverse.
What Makes Them Worse Over Time
Bone spurs tend to grow slowly over years, and the underlying disc degeneration that drives their formation continues with age. Carrying excess body weight accelerates the process. Sedentary lifestyles contribute as well, because weak core and back muscles provide less support for the spine, increasing the mechanical stress that triggers spur growth. Smoking impairs blood flow to spinal discs, speeding up degeneration.
Staying active, maintaining a healthy weight, and using proper body mechanics when lifting are the most effective ways to slow progression. None of these will reverse existing bone spurs, but they can reduce the likelihood that small, symptom-free spurs become large enough to cause problems.