Hey guys, my name is Dr. Jon Dandridge. And I want to give you three ways that you can determine whether or not you potentially have a disc injury in your spine. Why do we care? Why is this important? Well, to put it very, very simply, if there is damage or injury to our discs and our spine and we simply will not feel and function at our absolute best are the discs in our spine are incredibly important to its overall function. And if there is damage in the disk of our spine, then we will not be able to have an ideal function of our spine, it will not be able to move the way that it should, without pain, difficulty tension restrictions, and all these types of things.
The Valsalva Maneuver
So first test this is what we can do is something called a valsalvus test or the valsalva maneuver. And basically what we’re doing is we’re creating a lot of inter abdominal pressure in our abdomen in our midsection, think about blowing up a balloon that is really stiff and really difficult to expand. What happens is our abdomen, all the muscles in our abs starts to contract and build a lot of pressure in our midsection. And so what we can do is take a breath in, hold it and just bear down as if we’re trying to blow up a balloon. And that builds up a lot of pressure in our midsection in our stomach, if that creates pain, if that creates radiating symptoms, especially in our legs. If we feel like lightning bolts down or legs into her feet, any kind of numbness, tingling, anything like that, then that’s a good indication that there may be a disc injury in your spine.
Pain Throughout The Day
Number two, is just checking in with ourselves. What do we feel regularly and consistently throughout our day? How are our symptoms? Do we feel regular radiating symptoms down our arms and our hands down our extremities? Are my fingers and feet numb and tingling? consistently throughout the day? If the answer is yes, then there’s a good chance there may be a disc injury there.
Recent Accident or Injury
Number three is think back about what caused this problem. Like if there was an accident or injury that happened to you that started this the symptoms that you’re currently feeling? How did that happen? The reason I asked is because what we know is that most disc injuries occur when someone is is rotating, right with typically with some weight, like they’re trying to catch something that’s falling on the ground, and they’re rotating over to pick it up. Or they’re picking something up, that’s pretty heavy off the ground, and they’re rotating and their spine moving from one side to the other. This puts us in a very vulnerable position. And that’s a very common way that people injure their spine, and especially their discs. So if there was an injury that happened to you that is creating any discomfort. Was it like that? Where you rotating when when the injury happened? If so then there may be a higher chance that there was a disc injury, okay, there’s only one way to really know for sure. And that’s through some advanced imaging that can be done to determine whether or not a disc injury is there. And if it is there, what is the severity? Right. And so as chiropractors what do we do with this, this is the the point of all of this is to know what do we do if we have this? Well, what we know is that a disc in order to in order for it to be healthy, it needs to move, it needs to have an experience quality motion. If it doesn’t, then that’s going to create a downward spiral of degeneration those joints and so when we see people in our office and we when we adjust the spine, what we’re doing is we’re trying to improve the quality of motion that is in those joints of the spine. And when that happens, the disc has the best possible chance to maintain its health and to heal.
Okay, if you have any questions about that, let us know we’re always open for conversation. Thanks so much.