if you have low back pain and all you've been told is that you've got
degenerative disc disease or disc degeneration you're no better off than
if you weren't told anything at all in this video we're going to talk about
exactly what degenerative disc disease is and how you can manage it so that you
have no pain hey it's Coach E here from Precision Movement and welcome to
another video where we'll be talking about degenerative disc disease that is
a tongue twister you can definitely try to say that three times fast now before
we get into the meat of this video leave a comment if you've ever been told or
given the diagnosis that you have either degenerative disc disease this
degeneration or your discs are deteriorating and this is often seen
through imaging from your doctor so let me know in the comments if you've been
told this and kind of what you've been told around that what to do about it
how you're gonna go about dealing with that I'm just curious on what's out
there right now so what is degenerative disc disease that's a term given to the
fact that these intervertebral discs these are the translucent discs in
between each bony vertebrae when those start to shrink yeah as you can see the
discs in the lumbar spine they're maybe about just under a centimeter high or
for you Americans maybe 3/4 of an inch you know maybe 1/4 inch quarter inch
high and then in the thoracic and cervical spine they get progressively
shorter degeneration occurs the thing is degeneration occurs naturally as we age
so people in their 20s if you don't have any issues compared to people in their
90's will always have shorter discs than the
younger people ok this is because over time these discs they're fibrous
cartilaginous tissue often use the analogy that they're like a jelly
doughnut filled with Jam inside I filled with fluid just over time all this all
the forces going through the spine walking
jumping bouncing lifting weights they squish those disks and lose some of the
fluid and they get shorter so this is a natural phenomenon over time the thing
is when you've been given the label especially if you could they've been
your doctors called it degenerative disc disease you think of it as something
that only the medical establishment can fix and address it's like oh I have a
disease and now I've got to do what the doctor is going to tell me which is
typically pain meds and then and/or surgery but that's not what we're all
about here and we're gonna talk about how you can avoid those modalities so
how does degenerative disc disease occur well there's the natural phenomenon but
there's things that we can do that accelerate it one for example is poor
posture so let me give you an example somebody's got poor hunchback excessive
thoracic Chi for so they're rounded in the thoracic spine here what you're
gonna see is because of this position there's more pressure on the anterior
aspect of these thoracic discs and those discs can start that aspect of the discs
can start to deteriorate if there's little if you get a herniation fluid can
get pushed out and then that disc height will go down that's one thing that can
happen but oftentimes the thoracic discs aren't affected by this story because
they're already they're not very high so not much can be done to get them even
shorter however the lumbar spine is more susceptible to this posture poor posture
excessive kyphosis can affect the lumbar spine and here's how
when you're rounded forward at the thoracic spine the lumbar spine often
not all the time but it often compensates by going into extension so
you get excessive lordosis of the lumbar spine now this is going to put more
pressure on the posterior aspect of the lumbar discs and that's when they're
going to start to squish there's more forces going through there
so they're gonna generate a little bit more and you're gonna get degeneration
of maybe l4 l5 which is super common or any of the lumbar discs can occur when
that occurs you decrease the space in between the vertebra and then the nerves
that are coming out in between that little space called the foramen those
can get pinched that's when you get into issues like sciatica piriformis syndrome
tingling down the leg those types of things occur when that nerve gets
pinched so what was the root cause in this case in this example it was the
posture up here up high and the thoracic spine so if you're just doing court
exercises if you're just doing sciatica nerve flossing that might be helpful but
until you address the thoracic spine posture which will help you to alleviate
the excessive lordosis you're never going to get to the root cause and
you're always going to be fighting an uphill battle yeah and this is just
again this is just one example this doesn't apply to everybody who's got
degenerative disc disease so that's one one example
other examples are excessive heavy loading of the spine so power lifters
who are doing 400 500 600 pound back squats on a regular basis they're discs
are most likely going to be a lot shorter than somebody who's not doing a
lot of heavy heavy back squats and that's just simply physics there's a lot
of force going through there it's just gonna squish and shorten those malleable
cartilaginous discs okay that's just obvious so those are some issues what's
the what's the problem what's why are you have low back pain there's a number
of reasons the distric generation like I said can result in pinching of the
nerves that's coming out and result in low back pain muscular pain or sciatica
nerve type pain but this degeneration it's also often a symptom of core that's
not functioning correctly so what's the course supposed to do well there's a few
things first of all and most important the core
is supposed to stabilize this lumbar area so if the core muscles aren't
functioning properly to stabilize the lumbar area it's going to be moving
around a lot and sometimes it's gonna be tweaked and pushed and pulled in
directions that maybe it shouldn't be tweaked and pushed and pulled in so
that's gonna cause excessive wear and tear on those discs and ultimately a
loss of disk height so core stability that's super important and I've got a
number of exercises that you can check out I'll link to it over here one is the
damage control routine which is really helpful if you're experienced perience
that acute back pain where you bent over to pick something up from the floor it
could be a Kleenex and you tweaked your back and all of a sudden you can't
straighten up and you're just really sore so check that out but there's also
just basic core stability exercises dr. Stu McGill some of his favorite
exercises to stabilize the core so that these lumbar vertebrae and discs aren't
being sloshed around in there okay what's another thing to do well we could
do a little bit of decompression of the spine so one way that we could do that
is hanging and you don't have to hang upside down from your feet you can do
that but just simple hanging from a bar that's gonna the gravity is gonna pull
your legs down and she's gonna stretch imagine I'm just pulling down on my
spine here it's just gonna stretch it out and allow it to you decompress now
is another way that you could do that is simply lying over a swiss ball or
stability ball so you're lying there you're supported so you're not putting a
lot of strain on the discs but you're still decompressing a little bit because
your head is pulling this way and then your lower body is pulling down this way
causing a decompression force to go through the spine okay so some deep
compression on a daily basis can helped you get the fluids back into the discs
to restore that disc I another thing that you want to do is to ensure that
the spine is moving so I just talked about core stability and how important
that is that is like your foundation if you don't have good core stability
movement is eventually going to cause you pain but once you've established
good core stability it's really important to get the spine moving
because any movement of the spine will help to strengthen these discs the
reason being is because the discs just like all tissues soft tissues in the
body ligaments muscles tendons they respond to stress so if we put forces
through them they're gonna get stronger now it's those excessive forces
especially those related to posture or poor stability that lead to wear and
tear but when we do it in a prescribed way in a progressive way over time we
can actually strengthen these tissues so that they're more resilient and they
stand up to whatever we throw at them over the course of our active lives so
very simple exercises the cat camel and you know link to it over here it's in
the video that I'm going to talking about hunchback and improving posture
which again is super important so check out the whole video but the warm-up I
use for the hunched back exercise is the simple cat camel which has you moving
through really gentle flexion and extension of the spine okay so it's
important to get that movement to stress those soft tissues so that they adapt
and get stronger and also to pump the fluid in and out of these tissues
because they don't have good blood supply so they need a little bit of
extra mechanical help in pumping by pumping okay so that's something that
you don't often hear because it's all about core stability these days
maintaining neutral spine but once you've established that
foundation of core stability and if you had any pain those tissues are no longer
sensitive or irritated then it's time to move towards dynamic movements of the
spine and the spine is designed to flex it's designed to extend and it's
designed to rotate okay so we've got a maintain and if we've lost them restore
those fundamental movements all right so that's what this degeneration or
degenerative disk disease is all about it's not a life sentence many people
most people especially over the age of we have some level of dis degeneration
and some people are symptomatic while others have absolutely no pain and the
difference between the two is often posture movement patterns core stability
okay so there's a little bit of info for those of you who may have been told
you've got DDD and hopefully this gives you hope because it's not something that
can only be solved and managed through pain meds or solved through surgery but
how you how your body is structured and how your body moves is the greater
factor alright so thank you very much for listening now if you want to kind of
follow a full program with course stability at the foundation leading into
dynamic movement then check out spine control I'll link to that at the end but
otherwise I hope this was super helpful before you definitely check out the
videos that I link to inside this video and do those exercises because they're
great for everybody and do that up and I'll talk to you next time alright