Hey, what’s up everybody. Dr. Hunter Merriman here with Next Level Chiropractic, your chiropractor for low back pain in Bradenton, FL. And today this video is about why we take x-rays for low back pain.
Now there’s the obvious reasons, safety, right? There’s conditions like fractures, dislocations, infections, there’s malignant pathologies from cancer, where cancer has metastasized to the spine.
Chiropractic Low Back Pain Assessment in Bradenton, FL
All of these conditions can cause low back pain and it’s my responsibility to rule those out. And if they are there, immediately send those out to the appropriate provider to get that person help immediately, okay.
But after that, then I can get down to business on structure. Why? Because structure dictates function. Write that down because that’s very, very important. Now, in regards to structure of the low back spine. We want symmetry, okay. We want the spine to be as straight as possible.
But this individual, if you notice, the pelvis is completely asymmetrical. One hip is significantly
higher than the other one. They are at a major biomechanical disadvantage, and I need to decide if this is something we can correct.
Chiropractic Low Back Pain Treatment in Bradenton, FL
And if not, how do we proceed further to continue to get them the best results possible. Now this individual had no idea that their pelvis looked like that and they’d been in back pain for over 20 years.
So that’s, again, one of the main reasons why we take imaging, to get down to the bottom of the problem, not to guess, not to just pop and pray and see what happens. This is critical information that we need to know to progress further.
Now from the side, we don’t want symmetry. We actually want some curvature. Specifically what we call a lumbar lordotic curve. Now I like to measure the curve, so I have some special software that I run these images through and it gives me the exact measurement in degrees of that curvature.
Now, sometimes the curve has straightened out a bit. What we call hypolordosis. That condition can cause significant stress on the discs and those individuals are sometimes more prone to disc herniations and disc bulges, those types of things.
But now there’s the opposite. You can have too much curve, what we call hyperlordosis. And those individuals are more susceptible to what we call Facet Syndrome, increased stress on these joints in the back here. They can be irritated and it hurts to stand. It hurts to lean back. Those kinds of things.
In addition to that, I can get a great view of the spaces where the disks are. I can see if there’s any degeneration of those disks. And that gives me an idea of where the highest levels of stress are in the lumbar spine. And that way I know where we need to be concentrating some of our adjustments for.
So again, looking for alignment, curvatures, areas of stress, those kinds of things. That’s how we get you the best results possible. If you enjoyed this video, please like, subscribe, share, throw a comment below, and we’ll see you on the next one.
Take care.
