Spurring of the spine refers to the growth of small, bony projections along the edges of your vertebrae. These growths, called osteophytes or bone spurs, form when your body tries to repair damaged or stressed bone and cartilage. About half of older adults have them: one study of an elderly population found spinal bone spurs in 48% of men and 56% of women. Most people with spinal spurs never know they have them, but when the growths press on nerves or the spinal cord, they can cause real pain and limited mobility.
Why Bone Spurs Form on the Spine
Bone spurs are essentially your body’s misguided repair job. When cartilage between vertebrae wears down or surrounding tissues become damaged, the body responds by depositing extra bone near the problem area. The intent is reinforcement, but the result is a hard, sometimes jagged projection that can crowd nearby structures.
Osteoarthritis is the most common trigger. As the cartilage cushioning your spinal joints breaks down over time, the discs between vertebrae lose height, and bone-on-bone contact increases. The body lays down new bone in response. This is why spurring and disc narrowing so often appear together on imaging. Beyond osteoarthritis, other conditions that can drive spur formation include osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and direct injuries to the spine such as fractures or ligament damage.
Risk Factors You Can and Can’t Control
Age is the single strongest predictor of spinal bone spurs. The longer your spine bears load and absorbs movement, the more cumulative wear your cartilage and discs experience. Gender plays a role too, with postmenopausal women facing higher rates of both spinal degeneration and osteophyte formation.
Body weight is one of the most important modifiable risk factors. Higher BMI increases the mechanical load on the lumbar spine, causing discs to lose height faster and placing abnormal stress on the surrounding joints and ligaments. In people who are overweight, the supporting muscles along the spine can’t fully compensate for the added mass, which raises pressure inside the discs and accelerates degeneration. Because weight is something you can change, it’s one of the best levers for slowing spur progression. Poor posture and repetitive stress on the spine, whether from a physically demanding job or prolonged sitting with a rounded back, can also contribute by concentrating force on specific vertebral segments.
Symptoms in the Neck vs. Lower Back
Many spinal bone spurs produce no symptoms at all and are discovered incidentally on an X-ray taken for another reason. When spurs do cause problems, the symptoms depend heavily on where they are and what they’re pressing against.
In the cervical spine (neck), spurs that encroach on nerve roots can cause pain, tingling, or numbness that radiates into the shoulder, arm, or hand. Stiffness in the neck and reduced range of motion are also common. In more severe cases, large spurs can compress the spinal cord itself, a condition called myelopathy, which may cause coordination problems, difficulty with fine motor tasks like buttoning a shirt, or an unsteady gait.
In the lumbar spine (lower back), the most frequent complaints are low back pain and leg symptoms. Spurs that compress nerve roots can cause pain, tingling, or weakness that travels down the hip and leg. When the sciatic nerve is involved, this is commonly called sciatica. If spurring narrows the spinal canal itself, a condition known as spinal stenosis, it can compress all the nerve structures running through that area. The hallmark symptom is pain, heaviness, or weakness in one or both legs when standing or walking that improves when you sit down or lean forward. This pattern is called neurogenic claudication and is one of the more reliable signs that stenosis, rather than a muscle problem, is the source of your leg symptoms.
How Spinal Spurs Are Diagnosed
Standard X-rays can clearly show bone spurs along the vertebrae, making them the usual first step. An X-ray will reveal the spur itself and any narrowing of the disc spaces. However, X-rays can’t show soft tissues like nerves, discs, or the spinal cord in detail. If your symptoms suggest nerve compression, an MRI is typically the next step because it can reveal whether a spur is pressing on a nerve root or narrowing the spinal canal. In some cases, a CT scan provides a more detailed look at the bony anatomy when surgical planning is involved.
Treatment Without Surgery
Because bone spurs themselves can’t be reversed without surgery, conservative treatment focuses on managing symptoms and preventing progression. For many people, this is all that’s needed.
Physical therapy is a cornerstone. Strengthening the muscles that support your spine helps distribute load more evenly and can take pressure off irritated nerves. Stretching and mobility exercises keep the spine flexible and reduce stiffness. Over-the-counter anti-inflammatory pain relievers can help during flare-ups. When oral medications aren’t enough, steroid injections near the affected nerve root can reduce inflammation and provide weeks to months of relief. These injections are used more often for lumbar spurs than cervical ones, largely because the weight-bearing demands on the lower back make nerve compression there more common.
Weight management matters here too. Reducing excess body weight directly lowers the mechanical stress on your lumbar discs and facet joints, which can slow further spur development and ease existing symptoms. Staying active with low-impact exercise like walking, swimming, or cycling helps maintain spinal flexibility and core strength without adding jarring forces to the vertebrae.
When Surgery Becomes an Option
Surgery is generally reserved for people whose symptoms haven’t responded to months of conservative care, or who develop progressive neurological problems like worsening weakness, numbness, or difficulty walking. The goal of surgery is to relieve pressure on the spinal cord or nerve roots.
The most common approaches involve removing bone or tissue to widen the space around compressed nerves. A laminectomy removes part of the vertebral arch to open up the spinal canal. A foraminotomy widens the bony opening where a nerve root exits the spine. In some cases, the spur itself is directly removed. In others, surgeons focus on increasing canal space through indirect methods like inserting spacers between vertebrae, which can achieve decompression without the risks of chipping away bone near delicate neural tissue. When a segment of the spine is unstable, fusion may be performed alongside decompression to lock the affected vertebrae together and prevent further motion at that level.
Potential Complications Over Time
Left unchecked, progressive spurring can lead to spinal stenosis, where the canal housing your spinal cord and nerves becomes critically narrow. Stenosis tends to worsen gradually, with symptoms that creep up over months or years rather than appearing suddenly. In the lumbar spine, this can eventually limit how far you can walk or stand before leg symptoms force you to sit. In the cervical spine, severe stenosis can cause spinal cord compression that affects balance, hand dexterity, and even bladder control.
Spurs can also accelerate degeneration at neighboring spinal segments. When one level of the spine stiffens due to significant spurring or fusion surgery, the segments above and below absorb more movement and stress than they were designed for. This can speed up disc breakdown and spur formation at those adjacent levels, a process sometimes called adjacent segment disease.