www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/healing-back-pain-and-ending-the

This sentence overstates the bone-loss rate from glucocorticoids.

The review the article cites says: "bone loss ... can be 5–15% during the first year of treatment". It does not say patients lose 5–15% of bone every year indefinitely. The same review immediately adds that the increased rate of bone loss persists more slowly in chronic users.

A separate meta-analysis of 1-year glucocorticoid effects quantified the average loss as much smaller than the article claims: mean 1-year bone loss was -1.7% in the lumbar spine and -1.3% in the femoral neck overall, and -3.6% / -3.1% in high-dose cohorts. So the article converts a "first year" estimate into an "every year" estimate and materially exaggerates ongoing annual bone loss.

This statement is too absolute.

It is true that many MRI abnormalities are seen in people without back pain, and MRI findings alone should not be treated as a one-to-one explanation for symptoms. But saying there is "no correlation" between imaging findings and pain severity is not what the literature shows.

A 2022 population-based cohort study reported that pain severity was slightly higher in people with MRI findings, and that having multiple MRI findings (five or more) was associated with mildly greater pain severity at baseline and with a greater increase in pain severity over 6 years among participants who were pain-free at baseline.

A 2025 systematic review likewise found that most studies reported stronger associations between increasing summed MRI findings and low back pain, and several studies found the same pattern for low-back-pain-related disability. In other words, the associations are often weak or not clinically decisive, but they are not literally zero.

So the article turns a nuanced conclusion (MRI findings are often weak, nonspecific, and not sufficient to explain pain by themselves) into an incorrect absolute claim (no correlation at all).