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To stay alive and healthy, your back needs to move every day. The right kinds of motion nourish your back and help keep it flexible and free of pain. When the joints in your spine move improperly or too little, it can lead to many back problems—-problems that often begin in your discs, the “shock absorbers” and “fulcrums” in your spine. Fortunately, almost everyone with back problems can benefit from Chiropractic care.
Did you know that the movement of your spine helps provide nutrients and water to your discs? Depending on how much you and your spine move, the size, shape, and flexibility of your discs change throughout the day—-and throughout your life!
When one or more of your spinal joints are not moving properly, it sets up a whole chain of events that lead to improper nutrition and hydration of your spine. Chiropractic keeps your spinal joints (and other joints in your body) moving, increasing the health of your spinal column, among other things.
Spinal joint misalignment and restriction has many other effects, too. Let's take a look at them....
How Misalignment and Joint Restriction Affects Our Health
1.Spinal Kinesiopathology
Physical injury, stress, or chemical imbalance can cause the vertebrae of your spine to lose their proper motion and position. This prevents normal turning and bending and sets the stage for four other complications.
2.Neuropathophysiology
Abnormal spinal function can cause rubbing, pinching, stretching, or irritation of nerve tissue. The resulting nervous system interference can cause numbness, pain, burning, ortingling , and may affect the systems controlled by these nerves.
3.Myopathology
Muscles supporting the spine can weaken and atrophy or become tight and go into spasm. Scar tissue changes the elasticity of these muscles. Repeated adjustments help retrain muscles to support your spine and to function properly.
4.Histopathology
Swelling and inflammation lead to discs that can bulge, herniate, and degenerate. Swelling and inflammation also damage the surrounding tissue, and cause pain.
5.Pathophysiology
Bone spurs and other abnormal bony growths form as your body attempts to fuse malfunctioning spinal joints. This degenerative process, long-term nerve irritation, and scar tissue can cause other systems of the body to malfunction, too.
Spinal Anatomy
Your nervous system consists of your brain, spinal cord, nerve roots, and all the nerves of your body. Your brain is protected by the skull and your spinal cord is protected by 24 movable bones (vertebrae) of the spinal column. Pairs of nerve roots exit the spine from between the vertebrae. When vertebrae lose their normal position and motion, they interfere with the spinal cord or nerve roots, causing pain or ill-health. Eliminating and preventing these interferences are the primary objectives of chiropractic care.
There are many things that lead up to the Vertebral Subluxation Complex, and an unhealthy spine. In addition to physical injury, emotional stress, or chemical imbalance, poor posture can have dire consequences, the end result of which is the Vertebral Subluxation Complex.
An Unhealthy Spine: Common Problems
Torn annulus. A sudden movement in the presence of immobile spinal joints may cause a tear in your disc annulus. Nearby ligaments also stretch. Since your annulus and ligaments contain pain fibers, a tear may cause pain and inflammation.
Bulging disc. Immobile spinal joints may cause your disc to dry out and degenerate early. As your disc wears out, the inner, jellylike nucleus begins to bulge into the annulus, pressuring it and causing pain.
Ruptured disc. As a disc bulges, its nucleus moves closer to the outer edge of your annulus. If a sudden movement causes your annulus to rupture, the nucleus can squeeze out and irritate a nerve.
Arthritis. Arthritis is also called degenerative joint disease, osteoarthritis or degenerative disc disease. Over time, as discs wear out, bone spurs form and facets inflame. Long-standing inflammation causes joint cartilage to soften and deteriorate. This is painful in itself, but together these problems may cause or worsen stenosis. Stenosis is a narrowing of one or more canals, such as those through which your spinal nerves exit, or the large canal that houses your spinal cord. Stenosis irritates nearby nerve tissue, causing more pain.
Instability. As a disc stretches and flattens, the supporting ligaments become slack, allowing the vertebrae to slip back and forth.
Spondylolisthesis. An unstable vertebra may crack. This is a stress fracture, and the vertebra is now even more unstable, stretching the disc out as it slides back and forth, and putting pressure on your disc and nerves.
