Most patients come in, if they’ve had no real treatment and they have neck or back pain, typically we go over their history and examine them, and assuming there’s no real warning signs for the need for emergency evaluation, generally we start with physical therapy or chiropractic treatment.
The trend now is to get an MRI fairly early, as they’re readily available. They’re no longer very expensive, and there’s no radiation with an MRI, so it can help guide treatment early rather than later.
I think one of the most common mistakes people make when pain starts is just ignoring it. There are a lot of people that’ll ignore it or try and mask it until it gets more difficult to treat. So in general, if you have persistent pain that’s affecting your daily life, you should seek medical attention for it.
I love that video. I think it was all great advice. It is very common after 50. Stay active, walk, stay slim, work on your core.
I think it was perfect. It was simple. It was to the point. It didn’t try and get fancy. It didn’t try and talk about some kind of unique exercise. So I thought that was a great video.
One of the most ominous thingsin spine cases that are not necessarily intuitive that we worry about as spine surgeons is loss of bladder function. That can be a very serious condition related to the spine, and your spine surgeon will typically ask that on the visit, and you may wonder why, and that’s why.
Also, somebody who’s getting weaker and weaker, that’s also very worrisome for us and generally requires quicker intervention.
Overall, I think that was good advice, core conditioning, keeping the spine neutral.
Whether that specific exercise is better than other core conditioning exercises, I can’t say. I don’t really know what all this talk was about biological breathing. It just seemed like a way to get you to click another link rather than focus on spine core conditioning.