OrthoIllinois Chiropractic Sees Disc Disease in Young People
“You’re young! You don’t have to worry about back pain.” Not true! New research confirms young and old alike must contend with disc degeneration. Most of us will personally have to face disc degeneration’s pain at some point in our lives…or take care of a loved one coping with its back pain or neck pain complications. OrthoIllinois Chiropractic is here for young and old alike when McHenry disc degeneration interferes with your life.
DDD STARTS EARLIER THAN ONCE THOUGHT
It’s hard to believe, but it is documented in the medical literature. Disc degeneration starts in the late teens! A study of 18-20 year old healthy air force cadets revealed that 77% had13 disc degeneration or disc herniation. (1) That is a new discovery! It’s been documented in other studies that disc degeneration begins at age 20. Now it’s shown to appear in 18 year olds! In this project MRIs were done on all cadets. None of the cadets reported spine pain. The MRIs revealed that: 30% showed at least one disc’s dehydrating, 13% disc narrowing, 49% disc bulging, 18% disc protruding, 8% disc extruding, 13% with spondylolisthesis, and less than 1% even showed asymptomatic vertebral fractures. These results in young, seemingly healthy people are similar to what would be expected in adults. (1) It is never too early to start paying attention to the spine! OrthoIllinois Chiropractic takes care of spines at all ages via spinal manipulation, nutrition and exercise.
WHY?
Researchers (and parents) ask “why?” Why does lumbar spine disc degeneration or cervical spine disc degeneration start so young? It may be genetic. 80% of patients in a recent study had mutations in their collagen-encoding genes. Collagen is vital to disc and joint health. Lumbar disc herniation patients showed two variants in their gene encoding for aggrecan, a protein that the end plate depends on for load-bearing. Such a mutation affects the nucleus pulposus, annulus fibrosus and end plates. (2) Of course, the whole story of why a disc degenerates isn’t fully defined yet. OrthoIllinois Chiropractic does have ways to contain and relieve the pain of a McHenry degenerated disc.
INTERRUPTING DISC DEGENERATION, PROMOTING DISC REGENERATION
Researchers described disc degeneration as a cascade of mechanical, biochemical, and structural changes at the cellular level, cells that exist in an abnormal mechanical environment. Regeneration of such cells would demand very specific conditions and wouldn’t always be possible. However, traction of 2 to 6 weeks was found to be a responsive time for regeneration of a degenerated disc. The researchers propose that this could interrupt the above explained cascade of changes. (3) OrthoIllinois Chiropractic uses Cox® Technic to gently create a positive environment for the healing of degenerated discs by increasing the area of the spinal canal by 28%, increasing the height of the disc by 17%, and dropping intradiscal pressures to as low as -192mmHg in the low back and dropping pressures in the cervical spine by a mean pressure as much as 1265 mmHg. (4,5) OrthoIllinois Chiropractic enhances the Cox® Technic system of spinal pain management by adding spinal nutrition (particularly disc nutrition supplementation) and exercise to boost the relief and clinical outcome for McHenry back pain patients.
CONTACT OrthoIllinois Chiropractic
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Paxton Schofield on The Back Doctors’ Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson who discussed his care of arthritis and degeneration with Cox® Technic.
Schedule your McHenry chiropractic appointment at OrthoIllinois Chiropractic for your spine’s health. You may not be as young as you think for back pain, and you are undoubtedly not too young to take care of your spine. A McHenry chiropractic treatment plan of spinal manipulation, nutrition and exercise can be good for all ages of back pain and neck pain sufferers due to disc degeneration.
