welcome back to good morning Vail two inches of new snow on both mountains
in the last twenty-four hours but right now we're going to switch gears and doctor dr. corenman. he's
with the steadman clinic and he specializes in spine disorders and i've had my
share of this and I think there is a great majority of americans who do
suffer from spine disorders - oh my goodness it's you know it's estimated
eighty percent of the population at one time or another
it's a big deal
it really is and it's debilitating, whether it keeps you away from work
or the fun activities you like to do you or just life in general yes
and so today i thought we'd talk about
one of these disorders
that's pretty interesting because
obviously when you're young you're mom tells you to stand up straight
and you push your shoulders back
but as we get older we start to bend forward too and you can't tell your mother
to stand up straight obviously
but what happens is there are certain specific things that happen in the spine
that
force us forward
I thought we'd talk about one of them because it's pretty interesting in my
opinion that you know what i mean you see that a lot more with older people
and is there our way to prevent it if they are a little more conscious of it
there is but if you understand the mechanics of the disorder then you can
understand how to actually make it better I find myself sitting up very
straight as soon as you come into the room okay so you have some slides that'll show us
a little about the anatomy and give us an idea
of what is happening so walk us through this okay this first picture
uh... you see the white arrow pointing to the side view of the spine
and you can see in the center of the picture there's that long white canal
and the arrow is pointing to the black area
and that's a narrowing of the spinal canal
this condition is a mouthful what's called a degenerative spondylolisthesis
latin for an area of slip and narrowing
but this condition creates pressure on the nerves
so if we can go to the next picture
there we go, so what happens is that unfortunately our spine wears out
the discs themselves that small arrow points to the disk starts to wear and
the joints in back which i call the door stops actually wear too and literally
one vertebra slides forward on the other
and so what what happens, next slide, is that it narrows the canal
and so this slide is interesting because
our spinal canal
actually changes in volume
when you've bend forward and backward
so the picture over on the left is when you bend backwards and you see how narrow the
canal can get and when you bend forward you see the canal opens up
so let's go to the next picture
so we have a normal posture you know this is where people tell you to
straighten up
and you can see the head is sort of read over the pelvis on the side there
and the next picture
what happens with this disorder is you try to straighten your back out
because it hurts to stand up
so you end up
with the posture where you have a bent knee and a flat spine and that's
that's the gist of the whole thing and the next picture
and this is what you look like
you're sort of bent forward your knees are bent
and it's a real problem because every time you try and stand up straight
what happens is you crush those nerves
nobody likes to have crushed nerves -because that causes all that shooting pain right?
exactly
and so this disorder that you have
is something that's compensated for by bending forward
and these people can't stand up straight okay
now is there anything we can do to help prevent that
this is a great disorder
for a physical therapist because they can work on what's called core strength
which we talked about earlier
where you actually rotate your pelvis and you tighten up your abdominal muscles and
that flattens your back
and flattening the back is exactly what this is about if you do that you can
walk straighter and you can walk further it seemed like the back is always
related to the core, so to always have those working in harmony is
what we should strive for - that's the key to be able to bounce quarters off our belly
ok quick
now we want to find out more about this and the other work that you do what is the best
resource
uh the best resource i have a website
neckandback.com
if you go there you can learn about anatomy and physiology, you can learn about
treatments to take care of these things it's a pretty complete website ok
perfect and if want to get out there, ski longer, hike longer, golf longer
checkout neck and back and check out the research that's done by doctor corenman
from the steadman clinic we'll be back we'll have more weather details with him