San Leandro Chiropractor

Dr. Eduard Burt, D.C. is a Chiropractor in San Leandro, CA , car accident and chronic pain therapy (510) 481-2225

Back Pain and Spinal Motion

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back pain

Back Pain and Spinal Motion

Your spine is an intricate system of muscles, bones, tendons, and ligaments that allow you to move in a very complicated manner by working together. It is therefore remarkable. However, when something is not right, you can experience pain even when there is minimal micro-motion at a certain spinal segment. If you experience pain when you move, it is important for you to understand the things that are happening in your spine because this helps you to explain to your physician in a better manner. Hopefully, you can quickly find an effective treatment when you communicate better to your physician. The following are the most common ways in which motion causes low back pain.

• Twisting motions easily strain large spinal muscles:

The main reason motion causes low back pain is not because of your spinal structure. The ligaments or muscles that surround the spine in your back can tear or overstretch. Inflammation and pain occurs because of this while your body makes an effort to heal by limiting motion.

• Cartilage breakdown can occur because of motion:

Spinal arthritis is very common and people who are more than fifty years old are more likely to suffer from it. The mechanical breakdown of your cartilage that is between your aligning facet joints in your spinal back portion is known as spinal osteoarthritis. Inflammation occurs in the facet joints and more frictional pain occurs when the joints degenerate progressively. There is a decrease in the flexibility and motion of your spine when the back pain progresses.

• Compensation for excessive motion can occur because of the formation of bone spurs:

With osteoarthritis, there is a typical formation of osteophytes, which are also known as small irregular growths on your bone (bone spurs) on your facet joints that occurs in response to the instability of your joints that the degeneration causes.

Bone spurs are not responsible for directly causing pain because they can occur when you age. They may entrap or irritate your nerves that pass through your spinal structures by becoming large enough. Consequently, this may diminish the room for your nerves to pass.

Pain (and perhaps tingling and numbness) into your legs can occur when you walk because of most cases and you can relieve the pain with sitting.

• Pain from micro-motion occurs because of disc degeneration:

Degenerative disc disease is a syndrome in which chronic pain in the lower back occurs because of a painful disc, typically in people who are 30-40 years old. Excessive vertebral level micro-motion occurs because of the aforementioned symptomatic disease and it causes pain.

• Pain can occur because of motion in your lower spine:

There is a lot of motion in your lower back (lumbar spine) as compared to the four major regions that your spine has. This region carries all the torso weight and in effect, it makes it the spinal area that is injured most frequently.
There is a division of the motion in your lower back between five of your vertebral motion segments (all of which have facet joints that are covered by 2 cartilages and a disc). However, the lower segments (L5-S-1, L4-L5, and L3-L4) have a disproportionate amount of this motion.

You can help your doctors in the accurate identification of the specific cause of your pain by giving a better description of your symptoms when you understand better the pain that you experience owing to motion segment disorders. You should therefore use your EHIC to access appropriate and affordable treatment from them.

Author Bio:

Melody Cleo is a passionate blogger from Manchester, UK. In her free time, she writes articles on various topics such as technology, gadgets, travel…etc. As of now she is focusing on European Health Insurance Card, which provides health insurance services for the European people.

Soft Tissue Injury and Fibroblast Regeneration

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FIBROBLAST AND SOFT TISSUE REPAIR

Soft Tissue Injury and Fibroblast Regeneration

Mechanical friction during deep tissue massage, fascial manipulation or using techniques like Graston will activate the stimulation the fibroblast reproduction after soft tissue injury. These fibroblasts cells are the most common cells of connective tissue, and they synthesize the extracellular  matrix (ECM) and collagen, which is the main framework of our soft tissues. The properties of the connective tissues depends on the composition of ECM – tendons, ligaments and other connective tissues. Elastic and reticular fibers, glycoproteins, glycosaminoglycans, and collagen are all found in ECM and made by fibroblasts.  Collagen is the most important part of ECM and plays very important role in tensile loading. The stimulation of production of the above mentioned components can be achieved by frictioning tissues (in other words by providing cross-fiber massage).

Fibroblast production and degeneration is a normal process in every day mechanical loading such as walking, running, bicycling or any other form of movement. There are four basic types of loads: tension (tensile force-fibroblasts), compression (chondrocytes), fluid shear (vascular endothelial cells) and torsional shear. Collagen synthesis in patellar tendon ( which is used the most by bicyclist and runners) increases by nearly 100% as a result of just single bout of acute exercise, and the effect is till evident three days later. I guess I am doing a good job with my knees by keeping them busy with prolonged Mountain Bike Riding and avoiding soft tissue injury.

In the beginning of a training period the balance between synthesis and degradation is increased and there is a net loss of collagen. This enables a tendon to restructure and adapt to an increased loading pattern. It is not till training progress that there is a net gain in collagen synthesis. Deep friction massage can also help to repair a mild soft tissue injury to a knee tendon. Fibroblasts play an important role in wound healing. When connective tissue and blood vessels get injured, growth factors cause fibroblasts to enter the wound area, increase its numbers and begin synthesizing new collagen fibers, creating new granulation tissue and assisting in remodeling. The ECM of granulation tissue is created and modified by fibroblasts.

Recently I was exploring a new trail with another rider. During a steep rocky climb my rear wheel lost a traction and my right knee got over extended. I felt sharp pain but continued on riding. Next day I felt sharp pain around and under my right knee cap (patella tendon). Three to four sessions of deep tissue massage, cross friction massage and modalities such as electric stimulation and Erchonia Cold Laser L5000 model made my knee completely pain free. This is a real example of how Fabroblast is working.

There has also been research done that eccentric exercises may provide more benefit than concentric exercises regarding rehabilitation of muscles and tendons. Eccentric exercises provide greater stimulation of fibroblasts, increasing collagen synthesis and therefore stimulating the healing of soft tissue.

 

Sciatica Pain or Subluxated Sacroilliac Joint Pain

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sciatica painLast month I had two patients who came to my clinic because they thought they had sciatica pain. One of the patients has self diagnosed himself and the other patient was diagnosed by a medical doctor. Both of these patients had excruciating pain in their lower back, which radiated down to a lower extremity. It is very common that many patients will wait for their pain to go away with rest, anti-inflammatory and pain medication. As a result, pain symptoms will get worse and get to the point where pain medications will stop working.

The first patient was a male in his early 60’s. He came to my clinic on his crutches. The pain level was so intense that he was not able to support his upper body. The pain would shoot all the way down his right lower extremity past the knee level but did not effect his toes.  After thorough examination it was evident that his right SI (sacroiliac joint) was about 2 inches lower than the left SI joint. All of the nerves that were exiting from sacral foraminas (openings) were very irritated and inflamed. Every time this gentleman would place a load on his legs he would cry and I could see tears of pain on his face. After three sessions of full spine chiropractic adjustment, physical therapy (moist heat and electrical stimulation) and deep tissue massage from my CMT (Certified Massage Therapist) he was completely free of pain. I have recommended him to stop by once or twice a month for maintenance care in order to avoid future flare up and pain.

The second patient was a female in her early 50’s. She has had very similar symptoms as the patient I have mentioned above. Her medical Doctor diagnosed her with sciatica and prescribed her pain medications, which eventually stopped working. The examination finding were very similar to a patient I have mentioned above, except the part that the pain symptoms were on a left side. The pain intensity was so great that it would wake her up at night. The treatment parameters were the same  with addition of stretching to her lower back and some dietary changes. She was also advised on taking more frequent brakes from prolonged sitting that her job required. After 4 sessions she was pain free and was advised on a once a month maintenance care.

Sciatica Pain and Misaligned Sacroiliac Joint are two conditions that can be misdiagnosed or misunderstood by patients and other medical care providers. It takes much longer for a patient with Sciatica nerve entrapment to respond to a care. Often times Sciatic Pain is presented in athletes with intense training. In conclusion I would like to say that it is important to treat the cause of the problem instead of masking it with pain killers and anti-inflammatory medications. The sooner the cause is fixed the faster the road to recovery is.

If you have anything to add to this post, please feel free to Post a comment or share your thoughts through Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or comment section below to join the conversation.

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