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Can You Tell When You're Out of Alignment?

This is not to say that there isn’t a great deal more involved in examining a spine, but -

After you know what to look for it’s easy to tell if a spine is out of alignment.

If I am out in the mall, for example, and I see someone walking towards me I can tell that his spine and pelvis is out of alignment before I am close enough to recognize his face.

How?

* I look at how his head is tilted to one side and his neck leans the other way.

* I look at his shoulders and check to see if one is higher than the other one.

* Then I look at his hips or belt-line to see if one hip is higher than the other.

* When he stops walking and stands still for a moment I can look to see if one foot flares outward more than the other one and if he tends to stand with his weight more on one foot than the other.

These are all obvious signs of mis-alignment in the spine or pelvis.

Now, does that mean he would be in pain due to these misalignments?

Not necessarily, but he sure is a good candidate for back problems.

Mis-alignments don’t all hurt. At least not right away. Some, over time, may only cause things to not work quite right.

                        Because that happens over time - most of us rarely connect the dots

But, back to our friend in the mall - His back is in an unstable & weakened state. It is very easy to upset it.

           One wrong move and it’s going to be like someone just pushed his pause button.

Could be today, tomorrow, next week - unless you can see around corners - who knows?

But why wait? Check yourself in the bathroom mirror. If you see your shoulders or hips are not level - why not do something about it before it does something about you?

Maybe you might want to check things a little further - Download the Backdoconline Consultation Form in the side bar under "Links". Fill it out and submit to learn more about your back.

Who do you know who looks like he is out of alignment that you can send this to?

Spinal Anomalies and Variants Can Cause Back Pain

We started a new case this week that involved a 39 year old man, Dennis, an avid golfer.

He has never had much of a problem with his lower back but last week he was doing the typical spring cleaning thing in his garage and he tried to push the snow blower out of the way and well -

he zigged when he should have zagged.

All of a sudden his back made a little popping sound and he felt immediate pain in his lower back.

As the day wore on the pain became more intense.

He decided to take some Advil but it didn’t do much for the pain.

So he did what many people would do - he tried soaking in the tub with Epsoms salts.

Not much help there either.

Three days after he hurt himself he decided to give us a call.

Examining him, I found that there was a thick tuft of hair growing in the mid-line and at the level of his belt line - exactly where he was feeling the pain. 

Some might not see the significance of this but there was not another hair on his back - just at this one spot.

Most of the typical low back orthopedic and neurological tests I did were normal.

I decided to send him out for an x-ray of his lower back to see what else I might find ...

When the films came back it was immediately obvious why his back was giving him so much trouble.                     He had what we call a developmental anomaly or "variant".

His lowest vertebra (L5) appeared to be mis-shaped.

It was asymmetrical with the transverse process, (the small wing-like projections on each side), on the left being twice the size of the one on the right and the facet joint on the left was not the same shape as the one on the right.

                       Why is this a problem?

The asymmetry means the vertebra cannot move the same on one side as on the other. Because of that, joint anomalies are commonly weaker than surrounding joints. They break-down or fail before a more normal joint might have.

So when he tried to move the snow blower he bent and twisted in such a way that one side of that vertebra could move probably very well but the other side couldn’t...

The result was that he tore the ligament that restrained it / prevented it from moving in that one direction.

One can’t ever be 100% sure but, perhaps if everything was symmetrical, nothing would have torn.

Developmental anomalies occur in about 25% of the population and are a result of a failure of the bone development during the first trimester of the pregnancy.

Often, one can spot a spinal anomaly because they usually have an isolated tuft of hair growing over it.