April 22, 2014

Have you heard of tooth decay affecting just one tooth? Or diabetes affecting just blood sugar levels?

Disease doesn’t always isolate itself to just one part of the body. And degenerative disc disease is the same. Fortunately, Minster Chiropractic Center is well aware of this fact. In school, we chiropractic students learned about it, but clinical experience teaches the lesson over and over every day in practice! Your Minster chiropractic physician sees it every day. For example, a Minster lower back pain patient will come for a visit. A visit or two later, when he is feeling better, he’ll mention that “Oh, you know my neck hurts, too. Can you help that?” It’s not uncommon at all! (And, yes, we can help relieve neck pain, too!)

Degenerative disc disease is a faulty systemic metabolism in the disc. (1) The disc doesn’t process nutrients and keep itself properly healthy! And there are discs throughout the spine from the head down to the tailbone! Not just one disc gets to enjoy such degeneration. As a matter of fact, researchers note that healthy volunteers whose MRI imaging shows a lumbar spine disc herniation also shows a higher prevalence of disc protrusion in cervical spine imaging. This is just more support that disc disease is systemic. (2) Minster Chiropractic Center isn’t surprised at all! Minster chiropractic patients with low back pain and/or neck pain show us every day!

Now, this last study may make you wonder “Well, that was in healthy volunteers. They didn’t have any pain, but they have disc herniations?” Yes, fortunately, 76% of us have disc herniations that don’t hurt! But they do show up on MRI. If we hurt and do an MRI, 96% of us will see a herniation. (3) Let Minster Chiropractic Center assure you that we don’t order MRIs for patients without symptoms, but researchers do!

Another such study shows older, male patients with multi-level lumbar spine spinal stenosis are more likely to develop cervical spine cord compression. (4) So Minster Chiropractic Center watches for this phenomenon in our Minster older male patients.

Minster Chiropractic Center sets an individualized treatment plan for its patients. Spinal manipulation, exercise and nutrition may be good for you. Using Cox Technic, Minster Chiropractic Center gently and safely relieves painful symptoms of spinal stenosis and degenerative disc disease no matter where it emanates from your spine. Contact Minster Chiropractic Center today to set your Minster chiropractic appointment.

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