Vertebrates, including human beings, are blessed with a spinal cord that supports the skeleton in a way that we are capable of sitting and standing.
Your spine is not only responsible for supporting your back to stand straight but is also connected to your brain, and almost every sub-conscious action is governed by your spine.
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Strengthen Your Spine: Detecting Problems And Solutions
Any issues with the spine will affect the coordination issues of the brain with the body. Slight injury or sprain of the spine can leave you with excruciating pain, discomfort, and other issues as well.
The question arises how to identify the problems and work on the solutions so that one can have a strong spine? Let’s just discuss.
Slipped Disk:
The most common issue with your spine is a slipped disk. Pain and discomfort, along with numbness in the hands, can indicate a slipped disk problem.
The disks basically serve as a cushion between the vertebrae of the spinal cord to prevent them from sliding against each other. But some activities, like heavy weight lifting, can make that disk slip or break. This can happen due to aging as well.
The solution to this issue is either painkillers or maybe surgery is required in an extreme case. It is better to perform some spine-strengthening stretches and exercises and avoid lifting too much weight abruptly.
Cervical Spondylosis:
Aging is a process that wears and tears out most of the tissues in the body. In this case, aging lead to a gradual breakdown in the neck that finally leads to a slipped disk or sprouting of extra bones to boost the strength of the vertebrae. The spine issue also leads to stiffening of the ligaments.
A stiff movement around the neck and shoulder area, stiff spine, and pain can be noticed.
Exercises, specially targeted at the spine, might help in the case. Physiotherapies are generally recommended. Low-impact exercises are best suited to treat the cause. Certain medications and surgeries can be included in the treatment for an extreme case.
Osteoarthritis:
Wear and tear of the tissues and cartilage around the vertebrae may lead to chronic pain in the back. It is reported that women are more prone to the condition as compared to men.
This condition not only affects the spine but any joint in your hands and legs. Knee pain is also common in the condition.
Again, a combination of painkillers and exercise is generally recommended to ease the symptoms. However, surgery can be performed in rare cases.
Spinal Stenosis:
Osteoarthritis can lead to another condition known as spinal stenosis. The medical condition is diagnosed as the shrinking of spaces between the spinal cords that leads to pressing of skeleton or bones against the nerves branching out of the spine.
The symptoms include pain combined with numbness or tingly feeling in hands or legs and overall weakness. Under severe conditions, surgery is required to create some space back there.
Hot compress and pain relievers are otherwise recommended alongside physiotherapy to ease the symptoms.
Sciatica:
A pressure on the sciatic nerve due to spine injury, or slipped disk, or any other condition might let the pain travel to the hips and down to the legs. The condition is termed sciatica.
The condition is also observed and is often reversible in the case of pregnant women.
A combination of painkillers, stretching exercises and a hot compress is recommended for the case.
Tumor:
In many cases, the culprit behind the pain, numbness in the body is a tumor in the spine. The pain can spread throughout the body, and in extreme cases, paralysis is also observed.
The only solution lies in surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy and sometimes a combination of these.
Scoliosis:
The spine gets deformed and out of shape in this condition. This leads to uneven shoulders, one shoulder blade sticking out more than the other, etc.
The worst part about the medical condition is that no known reasons for this are yet reported.
One needs surgery to correct the problem.
Spine Injury:
Any accident that has caused injury to the spine can cause various symptoms depending upon the severity. A thorough diagnosis will help the doctor in deciding the further course of treatment.
Taking care of the spine is important to keep working on your day-to-day chores. A bit of exercise, especially targeting the spine, is generally recommended to reduce the effect of aging.