Degenerative Disc Disease

We’re looking at a spinal degeneration
model. And you can see on this side
would be a normal healthy vertebrae and
disc. And not only does the spine look
healthy, but these holes in the side of
the spine are nice and wide open for
that nerve to flow through with no
problems whatsoever. But in many cases
when an injury occurs there’ll be
compression or pressure along that disc
and you begin to see swelling and
inflammation occur. Now if that
condition is not treated at that time
over several months or possibly years
we’re going to see that disc get worn
down just like you see in this example.
And as that disc begins to get flattened
and it loses the fluid. we start to see
bone spurs or what’s called degenerative
joint disease begin to develop and then
we see a loss of motion and the person
notices that maybe it’s difficult to
turn their head to the left or right or
they can’t bend over in their lower back
like they used to and in many cases they
even tell me that yes it sounds like
there’s gravel in my neck or there’s
some kind of a crunching noise whenever
they try to move their spine in a
certain way. Now if they still don’t get
this condition under control at this
level eventually what will happen is it
will fuse and it will look just like
this where that disc now is completely
gone. The vertebrae have completely
fused together and those holes where the
nerve exits are almost completely closed
off and it’s very difficult at this
point to treat although we are
successful in many cases and we try to
help avoid surgery which may be the only
option at that point. So, for a
chiropractic patient, it makes sense to
get started early on, but we are able to
help patients through this process at
different levels. But it’s important to
get your spine checked and evaluated
before it gets to this point.