Concord, NC Chiropractic Care Respects Spinal Extension
Extension of the spine: It’s beneficial. It’s harmful. So what’s with spinal extension? Both are accurate: It is valuable. It is harmful. It is the job of your Concord, NC chiropractor to help you figure out the role of extension in your Concord, NC back pain relief plan and Concord, NC back pain control plan moving past the existing episode of back pain. Your Concord, NC chiropractor at Pure Chiropractic is well experienced in the effects – good and bad – of spinal extension and respects its role in spinal health and motion.
SPINAL CURVES
Two of the spine’s most prominent curves – the cervical and lumbar curves – are lordotic curves meaning they curve inwardly. Flexion flattens these curves. Extension magnifies them. When a disc herniates or bulges, it does so into the concavity of the curve and potentially pushes on the spinal nerves causing pain. Flexion often permits the disc bulge to get away from the nerve. Extension often permits the disc bulge to compress the nerves more. Pure Chiropractic sets out to help lessen painful situations like this!
SPINAL MOTION
75% of the flexion and extension movement in the low back happens at the L5-S1 level of the lumbar spine. 20% happens at the L4-L5 level. Therefore, 95% of flexion and extension of the lumbar spine occurs at these two lower disc levels. Here, degenerative disc disease (minor and more advanced) occurs most. In the cervical spine, C5-C6 is the spinal level where most of the flexion takes place, and C4-C5 is where most of the extension takes place. Concord, NC chiropractic patients need healthy extension!
SPINAL EXTENSION
Pure Chiropractic respects extension and understands how it may benefit and harm. The extensor muscles in the back weaken and degenerate just like discs do. (1) Extension helps strengthen these muscles to support the spine. Extension is essential for this when the spine is healthy enough to do extension. Extension to a painful spine may hurt. Why? In the cervical spine, flexion decreased disc protrusion and enlarges the sagittal diameter of the vertebral canal while extension made the disc herniation larger and narrowed the vertebral canal producing stenosis. (2) In a degenerative lumbar spine with spinal stenosis, flexion widened the vertebral canal and reduced pain while extension worsened the stenosis and caused pain. (3) Pure Chiropractic understands the key to eliciting the benefits of extension is in knowing when to use extension.
Concord, NC CHIROPRACTIC USE OF EXTENSION
Concord, NC chiropractic treatment incorporates extension into the Concord, NC chiropractic treatment plan for its benefits. Cox® Technic applied to the cervical spine dropped intradiscal pressures to as low as 502 mmHg (4) and to as low as -192 mmHg in the lumbar spine. (5) Extension escalated pressures in the lumbar spine to 1250 mmHg (the highest amount the transducer could measure). (4) Dropping intradiscal pressures and back pain is what Pure Chiropractic does for its Concord, NC back pain patients.
CONTACT Pure Chiropractic
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. David Atiyeh on the Back Doctor’s Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson. He shares how he helped a patient whose back pain continues after multiple back surgeries with flexion distraction which gives her relief as the table is flexed not extended.
Schedule your Concord, NC chiropractic appointment with Pure Chiropractic today. Let us explore the role extension might have in your back pain recovery and future back pain control strategy.
