Natural Relief for Spinal Arthritis
When you’re suffering with chronic pain from spinal arthritis, having the right chiropractor on your team of doctors is essential. When performed correctly, chiropractic treatment not only helps with natural pain relief, but can also slow further progression. This is why if you’ve been told you have degenerative disc disease or osteoarthritis of the spine, calling Dr. Levesque, DC at Blue Ridge Family Chiropractic is a smart move for help with severe pain and best natural management of this condition.
What is degenerative disc disease?
Also called osteoarthritis of the spine, this is a type of degenerative arthritis; the same condition that effects patient’s knees and hips when they need replacements. Degenerative spinal arthritis is progressive as cartilage and ligament tissue slowly deteriorate until the joint is ‘bone on bone’. Eventually, the spinal segment will fuse together but this takes many years, meanwhile the patient suffers with severe stiffness and chronic pain from constant nerve pressure. On an x-ray, degenerative discs appear as thinner spacing in between vertebrae, for example, L5 disc space on this x-ray is much smaller than L4 and L3.
Causes of spinal degeneration
Besides the normal amount of musculoskeletal deterioration from gravity and aging, severe degenerative disc disease is often seeded by injury. Injuries cause spinal misalignments that create scar tissue inside intervertebral discs. This causes an unlevel foundation in the joint that sets it up for deterioration from uneven wear and tear, much like the treads of a car tire that’s out of alignment.
When a disc or spinal ligament is injured, the spinal segment loses its normal mobility as a protective mechanism. As intervertebral discs rely heavily on motion to maintain their nutrition/fluid levels, degeneration begins from both lack of nutrition and uneven wear and tear. Without proper treatment, the disc deteriorates and osteoarthritis and chronic pain begin.
Best Treatment for Degenerative Disc Disease
While severe disc degeneration might make for a scary looking x-ray, they’re often not the main cause of the actual pain when you have spinal arthritis. Most of the chronic pain with this condition comes from the pinched nerves, not the deteriorating discs. This is why a chiropractor should be the first professional you visit if you want to feel better and properly manage this problem as naturally as possible.
Chiropractors fix pinched nerves in the spine by adjusting misaligned vertebrae back into their correct positions. The procedure (called an adjustment) is not painful and is extremely effective as it addresses several causes of the problem. Besides the pain relief from un-pinching the nerve, chiropractic care restores balance back to discs to reduce wear and tear. The re-alignment also restores normal motion to the spinal segment which also re-establishes nutrition that will slow any further progression of deterioration disease.
While chiropractic is a smart treatment choice if you suffer with spinal arthritis and degenerative discs, unfortunately not every style of chiropractic is best suited. The methods that help patients manage osteoarthritis of the spine best focus on alignment of the intervertebral disc.
Come to Abingdon, VA. for Help!
Dr. Levesque, DC at Blue Ridge Family Chiropractic in Abingdon, VA practices the Gonstead method of chiropractic. Considered by many the gold standard of chiropractic, Gonstead is also one of the leading choices for non-surgical correction of herniated disc problems and works very well for helping chronic pain from spinal arthritis and severe degenerative disc disease.
