La Grande Chiropractic Care Respects Spinal Extension
Extension of the spine: It’s beneficial. It’s harmful. So what’s with extension for the spine? Both are true: It’s good. It is bad. It is the job of your La Grande chiropractor to help you figure out the role of extension for your La Grande back pain relief plan and La Grande back pain control plan getting past the present episode of back pain. Your La Grande chiropractor at Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC 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 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 pushes on the spinal nerves causing pain. Flexion often permits the disc bulge to move off of the nerve. Extension often permits the disc bulge to press on the nerves more. Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC intends 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% happens 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) happens 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 takes place. La Grande chiropractic patients need beneficial extension!
SPINAL EXTENSION
Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC respects extension and gets how it may help and harm. 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 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 decreased disc protrusion and enlarges the sagittal diameter of the vertebral canal while extension made the disc herniation larger 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 exacerbated the stenosis and caused pain. (3) Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC understands the key to eliciting the benefits of extension is in knowing when to apply extension.
La Grande CHIROPRACTIC USE OF EXTENSION
La Grande chiropractic treatment integrates extension into the La Grande 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 increased pressures in the lumbar spine to 1250 mmHg (the highest amount the transducer could measure). (4) Reducing intradiscal pressures and back pain is what Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC aims to do for its La Grande back pain patients.
CONTACT Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC
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 continues after multiple back surgeries with flexion distraction which relieves her pain as the table is flexed not extended.
Schedule your La Grande chiropractic appointment with Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC today. Let us figure out the role extension might have in your back pain recovery and future back pain control plan.
