welcome back to good morning vail and it is health and wellness weekend joining us now
we have doctor corenman he's with the vail spine institute at the steadman
clinic and doctor corenman there are some staggering statistics out there
especially
in the americans are by how many people will suffer from back injury
and back pain it's amazing
the statistics really know that eighty percent any individual in the
US will have
incapacitating back pain in their life
i've been part of that and i know what that's like it is painful and it's so
debilitating and everything you take for granted
in your daily life you can't quite do but if you do a few steps some of your
guidelines you can prevent some of these absolutely and
everybody talks about core strength but i think a lot of people don't understand
what the core really is so i i think today's a good idea to talk about what
the core is and why it's important for back health ok we have some slides
to give people a diagram and
idea of what we're talking about and it's not just
your belly it is all of the muscles that are surrounding your middle exactly if we
could have that first image
that would be great ok we'll bring that up
so this image is showing the muscles of the back looking from the back
there's
fancy muscles called multifidus rotators
but these are tiny muscles that go segment to segment and really only
control individual segments if we could have the next picture
this is the abdominal wall we have flat sheet muscles
there are four major muscles that make up the abdominal wall and the front part of the
belly
this is what the holds our abdominal contents in
and in the next picture
these are the back muscles the main back muscles called the erector spinae
and these muscles actually create extension and when they're rigid also
makeup part of the core
next one please
a normal core for most of us unfortunately looks somewhat like this
where we have our abdominal wall which is not that strong and if you look at
the mechanism the diaphragm descends
and all of the stress is placed on the lumbar spine in the back there
the next picture please
the core really acts like a snake around a water balloon
the muscles when they contract actually push
the abdominal contents just like a tube up and down
and if we could have the next picture
what happens here is that when the muscles contract the spine actually is
distracted
and so the stress on the spine is reduced substantially
so when people have back injuries we talk about activating the core to lift
this is what you're really doing your contracting the abdominal contents
pushing against the diaphragm and the pelvis and this reduces the stress of
the spines substantially
and you know what you can do this
through exercise you dont need to
go through an expensive procedure to strengthen the core it is just hard work
and dedication absolutely true
it helps to have
somebody who's really well trained to teach you a physical therapist
trained in pilates or something of that nature where you really work on core
strengthening it takes about three months if you have an injury to try and be
able to regain your strength and you know it's not be no pain no gain kind of
thing that you might think oh' i'm going to do
100 sit-ups it's a lot of micro movement its so true in fact
sit-ups when you have a back injury
are the worst thing you can do especially the old-fashioned kind os stuff i cant tell
you how many people come in with injuries from that
well doctor corenman it's so great to have you here and to realize
that
core strength is part of the the ski season getting ready and it's just part
of life so if you want more information what's the best number to contact you
at 970-476-1100
or my website at www.neckandback.com