Many people blame lumbar pain on bone spurs in the lumbar spine, i.e. osteophytes, but this is actually a misconception. Bone spurs in the lumbar spine are often not the cause of back pain, but rather a form of self-protection in the aging process of the spinal structure. I. The occurrence, development and end of bone spurs The spine has both strong stability to support the body and a certain degree of flexibility to meet the needs of human activity. With age, repeated trauma and strain, uneven, excessive and irregular abnormal activity occurs between adjacent vertebrae, i.e., segmental instability. The body’s protective response is to sacrifice the flexibility and motion of the spine to enhance its stability, i.e., by calcification of the fibrous rings and ligaments to increase their strength, which is manifested on X-ray as osteophytes, such as bone spurs in the horizontal direction at the vertebral body edges and hyperplasia of small joints. Therefore, the purpose of bone spurs (osteophytes) is to limit this abnormal activity, which is a normal physiological response of the body. As spondylolisthesis continues to develop, the stability of the spine gradually improves. Most people achieve stability through the growth of the spine without the appearance of back pain symptoms; some patients with low back pain have improved on their own without any formal treatment, which is actually self-healing after the spine has been re-stabilized through osteophytes. It should be noted that many patients with low back pain may have lumbar spine osteophytes on X-ray, but their low back pain may be caused by other reasons. Only the osteophytes toward the spinal canal and nerve roots will compress the nerves and cause low back pain or neck and shoulder pain. Second, the advantages and disadvantages of osteophytes on the human body Spinal osteophytes are a natural occurrence in the human body due to the impaired stability of the spine, which is a normal physiological response, the purpose is to protect the stability of the spine, and is therefore beneficial to the human body. Only when osteophytes cause narrowing of the spinal canal and nerve root canal resulting in neurological compression symptoms, surgical decompression and fixation and fusion of the unstable spine are required to shorten the time required for the spine to achieve natural stability through surgical intervention. No treatment is needed for osteophytes that do not cause clinical symptoms, and there are no drugs that can eliminate osteophytes. Imagine if any miracle drug could make the enlarged bone spur disappear, it could also make the normal bone disappear, that would be a kind of terrible drug, you dare to eat it? In fact, bone growth is beneficial to the human body, and it is a misconception to try to cure back pain by eliminating bone spurs.