Spinal Injuries Hidden Offender

Likely you or someone you know is currently suffering or has suffered from spinal pain. While many who suffer from spinal complaints understand what is going on at the surface level, few of us question what allowed the spine to degenerate enough to irritate the disc and in turn, the nerves that exit from the affected level in the first place. While a certain amount of degeneration isn’t abnormal as we age, excess amounts can lead to early onset osteoarthritis, bulging discs, osteophyte growth and other degenerative changes. Typically, this degeneration is due to excess physical work stress, faulty posture or suboptimal foundational structure in the spine. Let’s talk about those spinal pain points.

Excess Physical Work Stress

In today’s world many of us don’t work a physically demanding job like construction, but rather deal with the microtraumas that come with working a desk job every day. It may seem weird to say because at face value, working at a desk all day isn’t the same as lifting or breaking concrete. This doesn’t change the fact that spending long bouts of time in a seated position is hard on your spine. The human body isn’t meant to be seated for 9-10 hours a day, so being stuck in this position creates a stress on the body we weren’t designed for. When we are in a seated position the stress load goes through the discs with minimal effort being put through the facet joints. Essentially, we have one person performing a three-person job. Take the stress of that three-person job and multiply it by 10 years and it starts to add up to the same amount of stress a more physically demanding job might entail.

Posture, Posture, Posture!

Typically, if you are sitting at a desk all day, you aren’t keeping the best posture 100% of the time, which is when these microtraumas mentioned above happen. While proper posture throughout your workday isn’t going to completely mitigate the stress being placed on the spine, it can stack the deck in your favor by changing how many joints we are loading through the spine and changing the workload placed upon it. When it comes to maximizing the number of joints being loaded through the spine, we need to first understand how many joints there are in the spine that can aid in bearing the load of gravity. The spine is composed of three main load bearing joints: the discs located between each vertebra and two facet joints located on the back. When we have sub-optimal posture while working, we will only load one joint through the spine (the disc). While this isn’t inherently bad in small doses, it can quickly become troublesome when performed 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week, for years on end. So, what does proper posture look like? In a perfect world we want to have our feet placed firmly on the ground, knees level with our hips, butt placed firmly in the back of our chair, belly button pushed forward allowing for proper frontward curve in the low back and sitting tall with shoulders rounded back. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, if you have ever tried to maintain this posture for longer than 20 minutes you can understand how difficult it is to work while remaining seated this way. So, what can be done? Drink more water! You are wondering how on earth drinking more water is going to help your posture? Answer: if you drink more water you will have to use the restroom more. When you get up to use the restroom you are moving and interrupting your long bouts of sitting. Then when you come back it allows you to reset your posture.

Spinal Health

 The last spinal pain point stems from suboptimal foundational structure in the spine. Some might refer to this last section as spinal health and they wouldn’t be wrong. The health or lack thereof via segmental dysfunction through our spine goes a long way when it comes to maintaining optimal spinal health. What I typically see in the office is a faulty foundation that leads to further stress being placed upon segments located further up the spine. When one segment in the spine locks down not only does that deprive the affected segment of vital motion, but it also places an increased workload on the segments further up and down the spine. Think of it this way; Many hands make for a light load. The same is true when it comes to the spine. Each vertebra is there to do a job. When one segment ceases doing its job, that workload gets placed on another segment in the spine. Do this long enough and eventually the vertebra working two jobs isn’t going to be happy and the bodies only way of telling our brain something is wrong is pain.

Where do we go from here?

So, what can you do to prevent this from happening? The first thing we can do is minimize our time in suboptimal positions when it comes to work and free time. Try to be mindful of your posture when at work, throughout your workday and at home while you are relaxing. Drink more water (it’s good for you!) and get up and moving throughout the day. Next, set yourself up for success by exercising or training in a way that increases your bodies resiliency and prepares your body for the stresses of the world. Lastly, make sure your spine is structurally and functionally sound to set yourself up for success. Find a doctor you trust to give you an honest assessment of where you are and what you can being doing to ensure you don’t have issues in the future.