Executive Chiropractic of Iowa Sees Disc Disease in Young People
“You’re young! You do not have to worry about back pain.” Not true! New research shows that young and old alike must contend with disc degeneration. Most of us will personally have to face disc degeneration’s pain at some point in our lives…or help a loved one coping with its back pain or neck pain effects. Executive Chiropractic of Iowa is here for young and old alike when West Des Moines disc degeneration disrupts your quality of life.
DDD STARTS EARLIER THAN ONCE THOUGHT
It is hard to believe, but it is documented in the medical literature. Disc degeneration begins in the late teens! A study of 18-20 year old healthy air force cadets found that 77% showed disc degeneration or disc herniation. (1) That’s a new discovery! It has been written in other studies that disc degeneration starts at age 20. Now it’s shown to rear its head in 18 year olds! In this project MRIs were taken of all cadets. They all reported no spine pain. On MRI, 30% showed at least one disc’s dehydrating, 13% disc narrowing, 49% disc bulging, 18% disc protruding, 8% disc extruding, 13% with spondylolisthesis, and less than 1% even showed asymptomatic vertebral fractures. These results in young, seemingly healthy people are similar to what would be expected in adults. (1) It’s never too early to take care of the spine! Executive Chiropractic of Iowa pays attention to everyone’s spinal issues via spinal manipulation, nutrition and exercise.
WHY?
Researchers (and parents) ask “why?” Why does lumbar spine disc degeneration or cervical spine disc degeneration start so early? It may be genetic. 80% of patients in a recent study had mutations in their collagen-encoding genes. Collagen is vital to disc and joint health. Lumbar disc herniation patients had two variants in their gene encoding for aggrecan, a protein that the end plate depends on for load-bearing. Such a mutation influences the nucleus pulposus, annulus fibrosus and end plates. (2) Certainly, the whole reason about why a disc degenerates isn’t fully defined yet. Executive Chiropractic of Iowa does have methods to restrain and relieve the pain of a West Des Moines degenerated disc.
INTERRUPTING DISC DEGENERATION, PROMOTING DISC REGENERATION
Researchers described disc degeneration as a complex connection of mechanical, biochemical, and structural alterations at the cellular level, cells that are in an abnormal mechanical environment. Regeneration of such cells would require very specific conditions and would not always be possible. However, traction of 2 to 6 weeks was found to be a responsive time for regeneration of a degenerated disc. The researchers propose that this could interrupt the above described cascade of changes. (3) Executive Chiropractic of Iowa uses Cox® Technic to gently produce a positive environment for the healing of degenerated discs by increasing the area of the spinal canal by 28%, increasing the height of the disc by 17%, and dropping intradiscal pressures to as low as -192mmHg in the low back and dropping pressures in the cervical spine by a mean pressure as much as 1265 mmHg. (4,5) Executive Chiropractic of Iowa bolsters the Cox® Technic system of spinal pain management by adding spinal nutrition (especially disc nutrition supplementation) and exercise to boost the relief and clinical outcome for West Des Moines back pain patients.
CONTACT Executive Chiropractic of Iowa
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Paxton Schofield on The Back Doctors’ Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson who presented his care of arthritis and degeneration with Cox® Technic.
Schedule your West Des Moines chiropractic appointment at Executive Chiropractic of Iowa for your spine’s health. You may not be too young for back pain, and you are undoubtedly not too young to look after your spine. A West Des Moines chiropractic treatment plan of spinal manipulation, nutrition and exercise can benefit all ages of back pain and neck pain sufferers due to disc degeneration.
