Problems with your spine? Prevent surgery with chiropractic care
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Surgery is a necessary treatment in certain cases of spinal and joint disorders, but can often be prevented with the appropriate care in many instances. Most people consider surgery as their only option, yet don’t realize that the field of Chiropractic Neurology exists. Our goal is to diagnose the proper cause of your problem and determine if we can help through a non-surgical and non-drug approach. If we can’t help you, or we get to a stand-still, we’ll let you know and the appropriate surgical intervention will be recommended. However, often times we can and are very successful in our outcomes.
Our treatments often include mobilization of vertebrae that are immobile, thus causing pain and discomfort as they continue to create inflammation and nerve irritation during most planes of motion. Once motion is restored, normal biomechanics are regained and pain and nerve irritation are gone.
What to look for? Symptoms often included pain during motion; muscle tightness; reduced range of motion; numbness/tingling/pain down your arms or legs; pinching type pain; pain in the shoulders and upper back; pain in lower back; pain in the neck region.
How does a disc bulge and/or herniation occur? The bones of your spine, vertebrae, are symmetrical in shape and have many different areas where they connect with other bones. When one area where they connect, or articulate, with another bone becomes immobilized you get muscle tightness and that area where this is occurring becomes compressed. This compression often bulges out the disc on the opposite side, depending where the compression is, causing a “bulge” of the disc. This is essentially stretching the outer layer of your disc and eventually can create a tear, causing a leaking, or herniation, of the inner disc materials. This is very irritating to the nerves and often causes compression of the nerve as it exits the spine in that region. An analogy of this situation is to imagine an ice cream pie. Squeeze down on one side of that pie and watch the other side bulge out. This is essentially occurring in your spine when you have these types of injuries.
The treatment consists of restoring normal biomechanics through neurological retraining; neurological spinal mobilization; decompression therapy; Electrical muscle stimulation and cold laser therapy. These treatments combined create very quick and effective results, preventing surgery.
Very similar issues of compression, muscle imbalance and joint irritation occur in the upper extremity in the wrist, elbow and shoulder, otherwise known as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Frozen Shoulder and Tendinitis. These can often be treated with great success.
Injuries associated with hip, knee and foot pain are often dealt with in my office. Pain in the back and outer parts of your hip are easy to diagnose and correct. Knee pain and tendinitis are treated quite frequently, as are ankle injuries and plantar fasciitis.
Here’s the deal, the worst thing that can happen is that you still need surgery, but at least you did everything possible to prevent it. Another upside is that you are now healthier and the region you’re receiving surgery in will heal faster and more appropriately.
