New Roads Chiropractic Care Respects Spinal Extension

Extension of the spine: It’s valuable. It is harmful. So what is up with spinal extension? Both are true: It is good. It’s bad. It is the job of your New Roads chiropractor to help you decide the role of extension in your New Roads back pain relief plan and New Roads back pain control plan in the future. Your New Roads chiropractor at New Roads Chiropractic Center is well trained 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 inwardly. 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 causing pain. Flexion usually allows the disc bulge to move off of the nerve. Extension often allows the disc bulge to compress the nerves more. New Roads Chiropractic Center sets out to help lessen painful situations like this!

SPINAL MOTION

75% of the flexion and extension movement in the low back is at the L5-S1 level of the lumbar spine. 20% happens at the L4-L5 level. Therefore, 95% of flexion and extension of the lumbar spine happens at these two lower disc levels. Here, degenerative disc disease (minor and more advanced) occurs 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. New Roads chiropractic patients need healthy extension!

SPINAL EXTENSION

New Roads Chiropractic Center respects extension and understands how it may help and harm. The extensor muscles in the back weaken and degenerate just like discs do. (1) Extension helps strengthen these muscles to support the spine. Extension is essential 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 reduced disc protrusion and enlarges the sagittal diameter of the vertebral canal while extension made the disc herniation larger and narrowed the vertebral canal producing stenosis. (2) In a degenerative lumbar spine with spinal stenosis, flexion widened the vertebral canal and reduced pain while extension exacerbated the stenosis and triggered pain. (3) New Roads Chiropractic Center understands the key to getting the benefits of extension is in recognizing when to apply extension.

New Roads CHIROPRACTIC USE OF EXTENSION

New Roads chiropractic treatment integrates extension into the New Roads chiropractic treatment plan for its advantages. Cox® Technic used with 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 most the transducer could measure). (4) Dropping intradiscal pressures and back pain is what New Roads Chiropractic Center aims to do for its New Roads back pain patients.

CONTACT New Roads Chiropractic Center

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 continues after multiple back surgeries with flexion distraction which gives her relief as the table is flexed not extended.

Schedule your New Roads chiropractic appointment with New Roads Chiropractic Center today. Let us explore the role extension might have in your back pain recovery and future back pain control plan.