Lynchburg Chiropractic Care Respects Spinal Extension

Extension of the spine: It is valuable. It is harmful. So what is up with spinal extension? Both are true: It’s good. It is bad. It is the job of your Lynchburg chiropractor to help you determine the role of extension for your Lynchburg back pain relief plan and Lynchburg back pain control plan moving past the existing episode of back pain. Your Lynchburg chiropractor at Palmer Chiropractic Center is well experienced 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 noticeable curves – the cervical and lumbar curves – are lordotic curves meaning they curve concavely. Flexion flattens these curves. Extension magnifies them. When a disc herniates or bulges, it does so into the concavity of the curve and potentially presses on the spinal nerves resulting in pain. Flexion often allows the disc bulge to get away from the nerve. Extension often permits the disc bulge to compress the nerves more. Palmer Chiropractic Center wants to help decrease 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% occurs at the L4-L5 level. Therefore, 95% of flexion and extension of the lumbar spine occurs 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 occurs, and C4-C5 is where most of the extension takes place. Lynchburg chiropractic patients need beneficial extension!

SPINAL EXTENSION

Palmer Chiropractic Center respects extension and gets how it may help and hurt. The extensor muscles in the back weaken and degenerate just as 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 hurt. 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 opened the vertebral canal and reduced pain while extension exacerbated the stenosis and produced pain. (3) Palmer Chiropractic Center understands the key to getting the benefits of extension is in recognizing when to apply extension.

Lynchburg CHIROPRACTIC USE OF EXTENSION

Lynchburg chiropractic treatment integrates extension into the Lynchburg chiropractic treatment plan for its advantages. Cox® Technic applied to the cervical spine dropped intradiscal pressures to as low as 502 mmHg (4) and to as low as -192 mmHg in the lumbar spine. (5) Extension escalated pressures in the lumbar spine to 1250 mmHg (the most the transducer could measure). (4) Dropping intradiscal pressures and back pain is what Palmer Chiropractic Center does for its Lynchburg back pain patients.

CONTACT Palmer 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 persists after multiple back surgeries with flexion distraction which relieves her pain as the table is flexed not extended.

Schedule your Lynchburg chiropractic appointment with Palmer Chiropractic Center today. Let us figure out the role extension might have in your back pain recovery and future back pain control plan.