Are you having persistent low back pain? Is it coupled by leg pain, numbness, and/or weakness? You research about the possible causes of your pain, read about spondylolisthesis, and want to consider it. However, how are you going to know whether or not your low back is caused by this condition? In this article, we will explore how you can tell whether or not your low back pain is from spondylolisthesis and what you can do about it.
The pain from the lower back is reduced through regular treatment from chiropractor Ottawa. There are various things to consider getting the treatment and reducing the pain from the back. Learning about the measures and treatment is essential to get a healthy and fit body.
What is Spondylolisthesis?
Spondylolisthesis is nothing more than when a vertebra in your spine starts to slip forward. If you are thinking about your body, it is slipping forward towards your pelvis, your chest, or your throat. This depends on the location of the slippage. Most commonly, it happens in the lumbar spine. Specifically, the L5 vertebra, the last one of the lumbar vertebrae, is the one most frequently affected by spondylolisthesis. That is where it translates forward.
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Symptoms of Spondylolisthesis
Most of the time, patient will come in the clinic with certain type of symptoms that happened almost every time with it and then other symptoms that depend on the degree of slippage. Every time a patient comes in with this condition, they really have intense tightness and stiffness around the affected area of the slippage. They will also often complained of the muscles in that area being severely tender just to even light touch. For example, just putting a hand in the area for a little bit, they will jump off the table.
In terms of the symptoms that can vary depending on the slippage, it can be radiation of pain or numbness and tingling. Radiation of pain can be sharp, burning, or stabbing-type. The reason this is variable is because the slippage of the vertebrae could potentially impact the spinal nerves that are coming up the side of the spine.
Cause of Variable Symptoms
In general, with low back pain that is affected by spondyloslisthesis. You can see little nerves coming off the sides, called spinal nerves. If one of the vertebrae started to slip forward, you could see how it would potentially affect the spinal nerve. Now, the degree to which the slippage occurs will determine how intensely you will experience radiating symptoms.
You will also sometimes experience with spondylolisthesis some difficulty walking or some clumsiness in the lower extremity if there is motor abnormalities. If the portions of those spinal nerves coming off are affected with the motor fibers. There are some variable symptoms.
This is a condition that afflicts mostly the lumbar spine. The reason for that is because the lumbar spine holds so much of our load. It takes on so much compression from our day to day activities. There is also certain athletes that are at high risk for this and that would be people that are playing hockey, football, Olympic weightlifting-type activities, and gymnast.
Treatment of Spondylolisthesis
We diagnosed it with really good thorough history and exam and then we confirm the degree of slippage using imaging studies like x-ray and MRI. We grade the slippage on a scale of 1 to 5, depending on severity. It depends whether or not you are going to be able to use some of our natural therapies for this condition.
If you have spondylolisthesis, there is a good change that we can actually help you. But really what depends is the degree of slippage. If your slippage is too extreme then you are most likely going to be a surgical candidate.
I hope that this is kind of helpful and shed some light on what this condition is and if you are experiencing some of these back pain symptoms, this might be spondylolisthesis.
So what are you going to do? You are not going to sit there and try to treat yourself or diagnose yourself, you are going to go and schedule an exam, whether that is with myself or someone else, you really want to get this taken care of.
If you want more information on low back pain in general or spondylolisthesis, you can continue learning by clicking the links in the top left corner of this website. This will bring you to a ton of great information on low back pain, spondylolisthesis and other areas of pain you might be dealing with.
