Active ChiroCare E-Zine
I have people ask me all the time if having a surgically fused neck or low back is a problem with chiropractic care. I confidently tell them NOT AT ALL!
Let me explain.
Jerry came to Active ChiroCare because he was involved in a car accident about 10 years ago where he was hit by a semi-trailer! Because of that, he needed surgery to fuse the bottom 3 vertebra is his lower back (L3, L4, and L5).
Here's an xray of Jerry's lower back from the side. You can clearly see the screws that go into his vertebra to keep his lower back stable.
The BLACK line represents where his lower back should be, and the RED line is where his low back is currently positioned.
It's clear to see that Jerry's low back is more curved than it should be.
Because of this excessive curvature, Jerry was having an incredible amount of lower back pain. His balance was poor and his core strength (the muscle groups that include your abs and low back muscles) was very weak.
Chiropractic adjustments are not advised if there are areas of spinal fusion, so we had to find a way to strengthen and reposition Jerry's low back without traditional chiropractic methods.
We kept in mind 2 key points: 1) Jerry's low back back needed less curve (structural problem) and 2) He needed to improve his core strength (functional or muscular problem)
Here is a picture of Jerry doing a form of spinal stretching which helps his lower back flatten out by pulling up on the bottom part of his pelvis. This means the amount of curve in his lower back is lessening, and thus the RED line is coming closer to the position his back should be in, the BLACK line. This addresses the structural problem in the low back.
Because Jerry's low back has more curvature than it needs, his psoas muscles (hip flexors in the front part of the pelvis) and piriformis muscles are extremely tight. He needed to stretch these muscles out to further enable his low back to relax and flatten out. You can see a picture of Jerry stretching out his piriformis muscle doing the "90-90" exercise below.
Jerry stretches on the Power Plate to help gain hip flexibility. Because the Power Plate virbrates at 40 times per second, he gets results extremely fast!
Next, we needed to address the functional part of Jerry's condition, which was the weakness of the core muscle groups. To help strengthen his core muscles, Jerry does an exercise called "Bird-Dog" which strengthens his lower back and core, as well as retrains his body to have better low back stability and overall balance.
Finally, here's Jerry's personal testimony of how utilizing the BStrong4Life equipment at our chiropractic office has helped him greatly reduce his low back pain, and at times even completely eliminate his back pain for days at a time!
Active Encouragement
"Virtually every successful person has considered giving up at some point in his or her struggle to reach the top. And many breakthroughs occurred soon after those same people rededicated themselves to their purpose. There is no known obstacle that cannot be overcome by a person who has constancy of purpose, a Positive Mental Attitude, and the discipline and willpower to succeed." - Napolean Hill
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