NewsChannel5 reports about 80 percent of adult Americans suffer from back pain. But there's good news, because recovery may have just become easier.

As a supervisor at a pediatric clinic, Ellen Askren is always on the go. However, severe back pain nearly took her out of the race.

"I would go to stand up and I couldn't walk. My legs wouldn't move. I would have to take baby steps and then the pain got worse and worse and I couldn't sleep at night," Askren told WEWS.

After four years of increasing pain, doctors recommend spinal fusion. And while the procedure often eliminates back pain, spinal fusion can be excruciating.

"You have to cut into the bone somewhere, and you have to harvest the bone," Dr. Gunnar Andersson explained. "It is a painful process."

But WEWS reports a new substance called demineralized matric, or DBM, may soon take the pain out of the procedure.

DBM is a gel, sponge or putty. It is mixed with a small amount of the patient's bone and applied directly to the spine. There, it not only stimulates bone growth, but acts like a framework to support the bone necessary for fusion.

Researchers hope that in the future the DBM will eliminate the need to harvest any of the patient's bone.

"It makes me feel very good that we'll be able to do things for our patients that we weren't able to do before with much greater safety and with less pain," Anderson said.

Healing time with DBM is about the same as with a traditional spinal fusion. It takes about six months for the bone to fuse solidly, and the bone continues to remodel for an additional few years.