What Is The Best Treatment For Spinal Stenosis?
Spinal stenosis is causing quite a stir here at West Chiropractic since the most recent blog post that we posted describing what it is. It turns out we have a lot of clients struggling with it or have had a diagnosis of it recently.
So just a recap on what it is, spinal stenosis is the narrowing of the holes that the nerves come out of. This usually occurs at the base of the spine where there’s more load being taken up by the lower part of the back and the pelvis.
There are two holes on either side of each vertebra where the nerves exit and often these can get compressed and press on the nerve. This can cause pain or mimic sciatic pain.
It’s really important to get a proper diagnosis as to whether you do have spinal stenosis as the symptoms can mimic a disc bulge and the treatments can vary drastically. Plus, the prognosis is also very different.
Disc bulges earlier in life tend to have a relatively good prognosis whereas later on, they can often take longer and because of a lack of cartilage in the body can take longer to heal and will not always heal to 100 percent.
Spinal stenosis is different in that the narrowing of the canal can press on the nerve. If we treated this as a disc then it’s not going to work for a spinal stenosis.
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What can we do with spinal stenosis to treat it?
One of the main things we use is decompression therapy because it extends the holes where the nerves come out. Decompression therapy is where we lie on a treatment table. We apply traction belts to either side of where we want to treat and the traction machine will pull a relative force in order to stretch the spine and open up the holes where the nerves are coming out.
This can provide amazing relief and clients have told us that they feel that the nerve pain in the legs or the lower back starts to reduce as they’re on the traction machine. This can be amazing to get them back to walking more freely, more comfortably and able to get back to their normal day to day life.
Decompression therapy can cause some stiffness afterwards, which is very common, which means the right areas have been working. We also use shockwave therapy, which is performed by soft tissue therapists in the clinic. This helps to break down some of the deep joint inflammation. This is used a lot for tendon issues but can be used nicely for some of the lower back muscles to help with inflammation and we also use MET which is muscle energy techniques in order to stretch the ligaments around the spine to make the holes bigger and then soft tissue therapists will use a variety of muscle toning exercises in order to get the core stable and the pelvic floor around where the narrowing has occurred in order to hold the correction in place.
There’s no point in strengthening a bad position. We have to wait until you’re in a better position. The pressure comes off and then we can start to strengthen and return the muscles around the base of the spine to full strength.
We’ve found that just doing one of these techniques doesn’t provide enough relief as combined with them all and then we empower and teach our clients in order to give them techniques to do at home. This has provided a much more long-term correction and relief in order to get them back to walking for longer distances, sitting for longer, traveling becoming much more pleasant and also relaxing and being able to switch off, not have to worry about pain in the back and down the leg.
If you are struggling or you think you may have spinal stenosis and want to get it checked out, please let us know.
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