Toronto Chiropractic Care Respects Spinal Extension
Extension of the spine: It is valuable. It’s harmful. So what’s with spinal extension? Both are accurate: It’s beneficial. It’s harmful. It is the job of your Toronto chiropractor to help you decide the role of extension in your Toronto back pain relief plan and Toronto back pain control plan getting past the current episode of back pain. Your Toronto chiropractor at Yorkville Chiropractic and Wellness Centre 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 concavely. 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 resulting in pain. Flexion often permits the disc bulge to move off of the nerve. Extension often allows the disc bulge to compress the nerves more. Yorkville Chiropractic and Wellness Centre wants to help decrease 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 occurs 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 takes place, and C4-C5 is where most of the extension occurs. Toronto chiropractic patients need healthy extension!
SPINAL EXTENSION
Yorkville Chiropractic and Wellness Centre respects extension and understands how it may help and harm. 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 necessary for this when the spine is healthy enough to do extension. Extension to a painful spine may be harmful. 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 causing stenosis. (2) In a degenerative lumbar spine with spinal stenosis, flexion widened the vertebral canal and relieved pain while extension exacerbated the stenosis and caused pain. (3) Yorkville Chiropractic and Wellness Centre understands the key to eliciting the benefits of extension is in recognizing when to apply extension.
Toronto CHIROPRACTIC USE OF EXTENSION
Toronto chiropractic treatment incorporates extension into the Toronto chiropractic treatment plan for its advantages. Cox® Technic applied to 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 increased pressures in the lumbar spine to 1250 mmHg (the highest amount the transducer could measure). (4) Reducing intradiscal pressures and back pain is what Yorkville Chiropractic and Wellness Centre aims to do for its Toronto back pain patients.
CONTACT Yorkville Chiropractic and Wellness Centre
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 gives her relief as the table is flexed not extended.
Schedule your Toronto chiropractic appointment with Yorkville Chiropractic and Wellness Centre today. Let us explore the role extension might play in your back pain recovery and future back pain control plan.
