This week I’d like to talk about a concern of mine for others. A statistic came out stating that about 80-90% of all Americans will have a serious bout of back pain sometime in their life. It wouldn’t be the case if people learned how to maintain their spine.
Think about it. How many people maintain their spine? How many people actually know how to maintain their spine? Were you taught how to? No, because we weren’t taught that way.
We’re taught how to take care of our teeth. We know we have to brush and floss regularly, eat right, and get regular check-ups with a dentist, but we aren’t taught how to take care of our spine.
It’s a big concern of mine. I had a lady come in yesterday. Her first visit was in 2006, she had a serious bout of back pain; I adjusted her and her back pain went away. But, people don’t realize that if you don’t maintain your spine, it can create problems. One thing that can happen is that your spine can form a situation called Degenerative Disc Disease; most of the time is a silent process.
When you look at the neck, there should be a nice arc. But if you look at the patient who came in 2006, you can see she had a reverse forward posture. The posture resulted in decreased discs and a big bone spur in her neck. We went ahead and adjusted her, she felt fine after one adjustment, so she thought she was fixed. We talked about how to correct and maintain her spine, but the problem was that she thought that if she felt okay, she was okay. That’s the way we were taught to take care of our health and this concerns me.
She came back just yesterday, 5 years later, she had back pain again. We took another picture of the neck, and you can see that the area where she had the bone spur before is almost fused together and that there are other bones that are starting to do the same thing. She was completely shocked; she couldn’t understand. She hadn’t experienced pain since the last time she had come in.
“How can that be?” she asked. “Because,” I said, “if you don’t maintain your spine, it will degenerate.”
If you don’t maintain your spine, it will go down hill. That’s what we do here at Bates Chiropractic, we correct and maintain the spine. You want to maintain your spine and not your problems. Unfortunately, a lot of people only manage their problems. So, the key to it is really maintenance.
If you want to learn more about maintaining your spine and that of your family, you can contact us at Bates Chiropractic at (310)545-4188 or online at www.chiropractormanhattanbeach.com