Largo Chiropractic Care Respects Spinal Extension

Extension of the spine: It’s good. It is bad. So what’s with spinal extension? Both are true: It’s beneficial. It’s harmful. It’s the job of your Largo chiropractor to help you establish the role of extension for your Largo back pain relief plan and Largo back pain control plan moving past the present episode of back pain. Your Largo chiropractor at Hollstrom & Associates Inc 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 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 presses on the spinal nerves causing pain. Flexion usually permits the disc bulge to get away from the nerve. Extension often allows the disc bulge to compress the nerves more. Hollstrom & Associates Inc sets out to help reduce painful situations like this!

SPINAL MOTION

75% of the flexion and extension movement in the low back happens at the L5-S1 level of the lumbar spine. 20% is 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. Largo chiropractic patients need healthy extension!

SPINAL EXTENSION

Hollstrom & Associates Inc respects extension and understands how it may benefit and hurt. The extensor muscles in the back weaken and degenerate just as discs degenerate. (1) Extension helps strengthen these muscles to support the spine. Extension is necessary for this when the spine is healthy enough to perform 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 increased the disc protrusion and constricted the vertebral canal producing stenosis. (2) In a degenerative lumbar spine with spinal stenosis, flexion widened the vertebral canal and relieved pain while extension worsened the stenosis and triggered pain. (3) Hollstrom & Associates Inc knows the key to eliciting the benefits of extension is in recognizing when to apply extension.

Largo CHIROPRACTIC USE OF EXTENSION

Largo chiropractic treatment integrates extension into the Largo chiropractic treatment plan for its advantages. Cox® Technic applied to 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 escalated pressures in the lumbar spine to 1250 mmHg (the most the transducer could measure). (4) Reducing intradiscal pressures and back pain is what Hollstrom & Associates Inc aims to do for its Largo back pain patients.

CONTACT Hollstrom & Associates Inc

Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. David Atiyeh on the Back Doctor’s Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson. He shares how he cared for a patient whose back pain continues after multiple back surgeries with flexion distraction which relieves her pain as the table is flexed not extended.

Schedule your Largo chiropractic appointment with Hollstrom & Associates Inc today. Let’s figure out the role extension might have in your back pain recovery and future back pain control strategy.