How Spinal Anatomy Affects Chiropractics

Video Transcript

"This is a model of a spine, this is not one of my ex-patients, it is plastic and I am going to demonstrate the spine. This is called the sacrum, this triangular bone, attached to it are these big flat bones called Ilium, these are spinal bones or spinal vertebrae. In between each spinal bone is a disc, like a shock absorber and also in between each bone is a pair of nerves, these nerves attach to the spinal cord, which in turn attaches to the brain. The brain and the nerves in the spinal cord create your "nervous system". What happens is, is joints or spinal bones get stuck into positions that they cannot get themselves out of. For example, one of these bones here will get stuck in a forward position and there is not a muscle from here, the spineless process of the vertebrae, to somewhere out in space for your body to self correct itself. So what chiropractor does is we will come in and give an adjustment to get that corrected. So what happens to a person when they are injured, besides getting muscle spasms and strains and sprains, joints of the spine can become stuck in a position in which it cannot get itself unstuck. Sometimes when a bone is stuck for quite some time it can develop inflammation in between these bones, in the space where the nerve exits. That inflammation can put pressure on the nerve and wherever the nerve goes to can have a some amount of dysfunction. For example, most people or a lot of people have a condition called "Sciatica" and what happens is the nerves that form the sciatic nerve, that exit from the lumbar spine here get pressure on them here and that creates pain down the sciatic nerve and or numbness and tingling. Okay, what I have here is, this is a plastic model of a disc, it is taken out of the spine, a lot of people hear that they have what they call "A Herniated Disc". A disc is basically like a jelly donut, but stronger, what happens is, is the jelly centered part can sometimes travel throughout the disc. The disc gets injured or dried out or it cracks or starts to get weakened and this jelly travels through the cracks and can form a bubble on the edge of the disc, kind of like a bubble in a tire. What happens is this bubble can also put pressure on the spinal nerves or the spinal cord and cause dysfunction."