SPINAL BONE SPURS: A WRONG CONCEPT.

Age, salt deposits – never mind. 

Just from your chair do rise! 

The trick to fixing your crooked spine   

Is steady exercise!  

I’m really stunned when my patients ask me whether their spinal problems are caused by age, bone spurs or salt deposits. It’s amazing how often the general public prefers false wisdom and prejudice to simple truths…  

Bone deformations – myths and reality 

Of course, when the doctor shows you images of those scary spikes growing on the edges of your bones and vertebrae, it is easy to believe that these "age-induced changes" are to blame for compressing and pinching your nerves.  

– Isn't this the case? - another patient inquires.  

Bone deformations result from calcification in the areas of chronic inflammation caused by either acute or chronic trauma or muscle spasms.  

Force vector … Osteophytes… Degenerative changes in the disk… Osteophytes 

– Not at all! – I respond for the umpteenth time.  

These bone deformations (called "osteophytes" in medical science) pop up as a consequence of calcification in the areas of chronic inflammation caused by both acute and chronic traumas or muscle spasms. Bone deformations result from calcification in the areas of chronic inflammation caused by either acute or chronic trauma or muscle spasms.  

In terms of evolution and the struggle for survival, osteophytes are even believed to be a good thing. Indeed, if a joint suffers irreversible damage, they restrict its movements and prevents further degeneration.  

This is important, since confusing cause and effect leads people to counterproductive actions. Suppose you believe that the wagon pushes the horse, not that the horse pulls the wagon. If there is a problem, instead of feeding and watering the horse, you start dismantling and reassembling the wagon! You'll get nowhere, since the poor horse will sooner or later starve to death.  

Learn to "feed" your joints and muscles 

Let us get back to your joints. If you believe that old age and salt deposits cause your troubles, you would either try experimenting with your diet or, more often, obediently take whatever pills the doctor prescribes. In the meantime, your joints are inevitably going the way of the dodo, sorry, the aforementioned horse. Think immobility, bad circulation, and muscle spasms, think the resulting joint and ligament inflammation, rather than the number of birthdays behind you or those treacherous salt deposits.  Start feeding you "horse” -- let it move and receive enough blood. Heed the pain and distress messages sent by your body.  Then your “horse” is likely to last some more time despite all the "age-induced changes" along with "salt deposits".  

I know it from my personal experience and from that of thousands of patients who literally passed through my hands. Indeed, there is nothing like manual therapy to precisely diagnose deep muscle spasms, restore circulation, and provide nutrition to the starving trigger points that hurt you like sharp spikes. These "spikes", however, cannot be removed by a diet or surgery. They result from immobility and can be cured by movement only.  

To free your trigger points from pain, learn to work with your core muscles. 

Sluggish blood circulation makes idle muscles shrink into sensitive nodes, a.k.a. trigger points. When stimulated, these points launch the "missiles" of pain at our lower back, neck, knee,s and other targets. You can thwart this aggression by learning special exercises for the core muscles that support the spine. These exercises are not unlike yoga - just find a skilled instructor and be a conscientious student.  

If you understand the root causes of your problems and work diligently to eliminate them, if you refuse to put up with the one-size-fits-all diagnosis of "age-induced changes”, if you do not tilt at windmills, you will certainly win the struggle against pain and immobility!