Should I Be Worried About Spinal Degeneration?

If you have ever been to a doctor’s office and had an x-ray performed, you have likely heard about something called spinal degeneration. Spinal degeneration is a condition in which the discs and joints of the spine begin to narrow and often form bone spurs.

If you’ve ever been to a chiropractor’s office and seen your x-rays, you’ve probably seen a chart that looks like this:

You compared yourself to one of these images, and identified yourself within one of the various phases of spinal degeneration. Maybe you felt confused. Maybe you felt alarmed, perhaps even a little scared. Either way, you knew that your spine probably didn’t look like the “normal” and that you had work to do.

How Bad is it Really?

No one likes to be told that their spine is developing arthritic degeneration. It’s a sign that the days of our youth are fading, and a reminder that our bodies are not going to last forever.

Everyone will develop some level of spinal degeneration as we get older.

Regardless of whether someone has a lifetime of chiropractic, supplements, positive mental attitude, etc, we cannot stop discs from breaking down or bone spurs from forming. Once people get into their 40’s and 50’s, we expect to see some degree of degeneration in the spine to occur.

Are there those in their 70’s without it? Sure. But those are OUTLIERS, and we don’t make predictions based on a handful of outliers.

With that being said, here are some quick facts to know about spinal degeneration.

1. Degeneration ≠ Pain – One of the things that frustrates me is when someone tells a patient that they are going to live with chronic pain because they have spinal degeneration.

While many people with degeneration do have spinal pain, an OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of people with degeneration have no pain what so ever.

While a lot of people with pain have some level of spinal degeneration, that doesn’t mean that spinal degeneration is the CAUSE of their pain.

I’ve seen many patients with massive spinal degeneration, and many of them will get better despite the fact that their degeneration has NOT CHANGED.

We have to resist being trapped within a diagnosis, especially if that diagnosis has a high degree of inaccuracy. 

2. Your Spine Isn’t Going to Fuse (Probably) – some patients have concerns that a doctor told them that their spine is fusing. This is always something that raises my eyebrows because there are less than a handful of situations where you would expect the segments of the spine to fuse together.

1. Vertebra don’t fuse as they degenerate. Discs will get closer together to where there’s minimal space, but regular degeneration WILL NOT turn into a fused vertebra. They are completely different things.   
2. We have NO idea what the time table is on degeneration.

Except in cases of certain disease processes (i.e. – ankylosing spondylitis), this is nothing but fear mongering.

Degeneration, not Death Sentence

Degeneration can be a problem for some patients. Loss of hydration in the disc, and lack of movement in the spine can create problems for the brain and nervous system.

Time and again, I’ve seen patients who have been told that their problem is related to arthritic knees, hips, and spines respond really nicely to Structural Correction. Even without seeing any change to the degenerated joint.

If the arthritis were the sole problem, then no one with spinal degeneration would ever get better.

Degeneration is a sign of a breakdown process, but it’s not usually the cause. We need to be freed from these self-defeating labels that hold us back from living the active and healthy lifestyle we all deserve. If you’ve been told that your pain or problem is because of arthritis or degeneration, it may be time to get another opinion.

Call our office today and book your appointment to get back on the right track. 248-287-8700

I’ve Already Had Spinal Surgery, it’s too late for you to help me?

Every year, hundreds of THOUSANDS of people will under go some form of spinal surgery. These surgeries range from spinal fusions, discectomies, disc replacements, and more.

I would like to discuss a popular misconception. Many people think that if they’ve had surgery on their spine, then there’s no way that they can see a chiropractor. Now, based on what many people perceive of chiropractic, I can’t say that I blame them at all. If you’ve had rods, plates, and screws placed into your spine, then the thought of someone wrenching or twisting the spine, causing damage in the surgical attachments…it sounds downright terrifying.

Not All Chiropractic Techniques Are the Same

Most people associate chiropractic with a move you’d see out of a martial arts movie. The truth is, there are many ways to bring about a correction of the spine, and some are very gentle and non-invasive. Some are so safe that they can be used on elderly folks with osteoporosis, new born babies, people with herniated discs, and even people who have had surgery. In our office, we use only the most precise and gentle chiropractic approaches so that we can take care of people of any population.

Needless to say, safety isn’t the main issue when you’re armed with the correct chiropractic tools. The big question that remains is: Can chiropractic help me even if surgery didn’t?

I was taking care of a patient who had had surgery on her neck for neck pain and arm pain. Since the surgery, her pain persisted. She was tired of trying to fix the problem and had basically given up on herself. Very unlikely that she would ever walk into my office of her own.

She was referred to the office to give Structural Correction care a try. After a consultation and an explanation of my adjusting techniques, she felt safe enough to give it a go. In a few short weeks, many of the symptoms she had before the surgery started to go away. Now here is a VERY VERY VERY important point:

The adjustments did NOT NOT NOT make her pain go away

Now this might sound crazy, but it’s not the adjustment that did the healing. Adjustments in of themselves have NO capacity to heal someone.

The problem was that her neck had shifted so far out of place, that the nerves in her neck were being compressed and irritated. When you add the surgery on top of it, it had locked the neck in a shifted position even further. The adjustments simply help to restore the NORMAL alignment of the head and neck. When the spine goes back to normal, then the nerves can work again. It’s that simple.

This is not an unusual situation. In fact, because of the focus on structural correction and the gentle adjustment techniques, I have been referred dozens of patients after surgery in the past, and almost all of them respond great to our care.

When you, or someone you know has had surgery, there are very real limitations to how much the structure of the spine can be corrected. As much as I love and enjoy helping patients post-surgery, the best thing anyone can do is to have their structure corrected BEFORE surgery becomes part of the picture. That way you can achieve a maximum correction, and have less dependency on chiropractic to stay well.

“It Must Be Because I’m Getting Old”

Are you suffering because of age, or might it be something deeper?

 “Don’t get old, you end up like this”

“That’s just because of old age”

“See, this is why you shouldn’t get older”

These are some of the most common phrases that I hear when people talk about the pain they’re having. Most of the time, they’re being said by someone in their early 40’s; which is just more than half of an American’s lifespan (78 years of age: 2012). It’s spoken as if Father Time had a magic shot that make a person start experiencing pain and arthritis completely out of the blue when they hit nature’s halfway point.

Let’s take a look at it for a second. When most people talk about the pain of getting old, they’re usually referring to a cascade of problems that’s lumped into the name Arthritis. We’re talking about the joint shrinking version known as osteoarthritis, and not the hot and burning inflammatory arthritis. Osteoarthritis is usually used to describe any one of these problems: degenerative joint disease, degenerative disc disease, spondylosis, bone spurs, and spinal canal stenosis.

Let’s take a look at one example:

 

This is the x-ray of a spine from a side view. This is a person in their late 50’s or early 60’s with neck pain and arm pain for the past year. The yellow arrows are pointing to areas that have severe degenerative disc disease, estimated 40-50 years of breakdown. When these badly degenerated discs were pointed out to them, guess what was said?

“Oh, those are just due to old age”

Now, of course there will be wear and tear on the spine of a 60 year old person. There’s no question about that. But the extent of damage to the area of the spine is substantial. Now the interesting thing is this, how old is the healthy disc of the spine?

That’s a trick question of course, because all of the discs are the same age. If this problem was strictly a matter of aging, wouldn’t you expect every single disc to have similar levels of degeneration?

“Here’s the truth, this person did not have a problem of age; they had an aging problem.”

There are definitive problems with the structure of this person’s spine. When a structural problem happens into the spine, 2 things can happen:

1. The biomechanics of the spine become distorted and accelerate the wear and tear of the joints. Think about what happens to your car when the tires are improperly aligned. Would you expect the steering wheel to pull to one side? Would you expect one tire to wear out on one side faster than the other? Would you expect the ability for the tire to hold air to be different from side to side? The same thing happens to the joints of the spine too!

2. The structural shift will distort the signals going in and out of the brain. As the spine shifts, the spinal cord and spinal nerves will misfire into the brain. This misfiring causes the muscles of the spine to tighten and spasm, and create dysfunction to anywhere where those nerves travel.

Those are the facts. Here’s where things get tricky. This person had a problem in their spine for upwards of 50+ years. However, they did not show any signs of pain until the past year. What gives?

Problems in the spine can be left undiagnosed and unidentified for several years. Research shows that many of us have herniated discs in the spine, and out of those people 60% of you will feel no symptoms.  Thus, a problem that should be of primary concern can be wreaking havoc on the body without us knowing it.

With that said, these problems are almost always preventable. With proper exercise and proper postural awareness, you can save years of wear and tear on the spine, and maintain full function of the delicate nervous system. As with anything else, it’s always important that you protect the parts of your body that you hold most dear through routine checkups.

We always find time to check our blood pressure, cholesterol, eyes, and of course your teeth. 

When was the last time the structure of your spine was checked?