St Peters Chiropractic Care Respects Spinal Extension
Extension of the spine: It’s beneficial. It’s harmful. So what’s with extension for the spine? Both are accurate: It’s valuable. It is harmful. It is the job of your St Peters chiropractor to help you figure out the role of extension for your St Peters back pain relief plan and St Peters back pain control plan in the future. Your St Peters chiropractor at Old Mill Chiropractic is well experienced in the effects – good and bad – of spinal extension and respects its role in spinal health and mobility.
SPINAL CURVES
Two of the spine’s most noticeable 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 presses on the spinal nerves resulting in pain. Flexion often allows the disc bulge to get away from the nerve. Extension often allows the disc bulge to compress the nerves more. Old Mill Chiropractic sets out to help reduce 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% occurs at the L4-L5 level. Therefore, 95% of flexion and extension of the lumbar spine happens at these two lower disc levels. Here, degenerative disc disease (minor and more advanced) happens most. In the cervical spine, C5-C6 is the spinal level where most of the flexion occurs, and C4-C5 is where most of the extension takes place. St Peters chiropractic patients need healthy extension!
SPINAL EXTENSION
Old Mill Chiropractic respects extension and understands how it may benefit and hurt. The extensor muscles in the back weaken and degenerate just as discs degenerate. (1) Extension helps strengthen these muscles to support the spine. Extension is essential for this when the spine is healthy enough to perform 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 constricted the vertebral canal producing stenosis. (2) In a degenerative lumbar spine with spinal stenosis, flexion opened the vertebral canal and relieved pain while extension exacerbated the stenosis and caused pain. (3) Old Mill Chiropractic understands the key to getting the benefits of extension is in recognizing when to use extension.
St Peters CHIROPRACTIC USE OF EXTENSION
St Peters chiropractic treatment integrates extension into the St Peters chiropractic treatment plan for its benefits. Cox® Technic used with the cervical spine reduced 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 most the transducer could measure). (4) Dropping intradiscal pressures and back pain is what Old Mill Chiropractic does for its St Peters back pain patients.
CONTACT Old Mill 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 persists after multiple back surgeries with flexion distraction which relieves her pain as the table is flexed not extended.
Schedule your St Peters chiropractic appointment with Old Mill Chiropractic today. Let’s figure out the role extension might have in your back pain recovery and future back pain control plan.
