90%
Maybe 80%, but it sure feels like 90 most of the time. But it doesn’t pay to be a “feel” kind of a guy, I also feel like nobody eats McDonalds any more. But thats because my kids have never been there, and I am in the micro economy of my office. Take a look out there, they keep building those things, so I guess people eat there. Oh, yeah. 90% of what?
The problems that I see in people stem from their posture. But sad for you, and great for me, once you have altered structure through poor posture, you cannot completely return structure without assistance…. mine. 🙂 We start at the age of 5. Well, for many kids it is before that time. But we get into our first pre-school class, or kindergarten, and we sit at a desk. And we are in a good place, it is fun, there are friends, a teacher. Artistic efforts occupy most of our day, and fortunately at this point we are getting up often, sitting in a circle, playing with toys. Moving our little bodies in all of the ways that we need to maintain health and function.
But this one thing has begun, the process of sitting at a desk. By the time we are 10, we sit most of the day. The getting up has left us, and now we slouch, with our lumbar spines reversed, and worse than that, our cervical spines are shifted forward, or even reversed.
When a 12 year old comes in to our office, it is common to see loss of cervical curve, and two times in the past month, I have had teenagers with arthritis in their necks. Imagine the shock of the parents when their child with no complaint of neck pain, who is being checked as a routine wellness check, is found to have arthritis in their spine. All due to posture.
So why does posture have such a negative impact? This guy named Wolff did some research, and got himself a law. Yeah, pretty cool, according to Wikipedia: Wolff’s law is a theory developed by the German anatomist and surgeon Julius Wolff (1836–1902) in the 19th century that states that bone in a healthy person or animal will adapt to the loads under which it is placed.
The cord compression where the arrow is pointing is due to degenerative changes in this spine because of the forward head carriage.
The simplest way to explain this, is to picture the spine as bearing load in the posterior or the back part of the spine. As load is transferred towards the front, you damage the front of the spine and cause degeneration to the disc and vertebral body. That damage causes displacement of the disc towards the back of the spine, as well as secondary bone forces according to the law above, thus you create degeneration in the back of the spine, which is where the spinal cord is.
Posterior bone spurs are dangerous for one primary reason. Compression of the spinal cord. As shown in the work of several MD’s in 2005 at the University of Tokyo when chickens had reversed cervical spines. In this study, degeneration of the spinal cord was seen in almost all birds with compression of the cord. Degeneration means demyelination and atrophy. like MS and ALS.
In chickens – they don’t have bad posture by the way – the way the degeneration was spurred along was to perform c-spine surgery, laminectomy at the C4/C5 level. Following laminectomy the changes were seen, that very closely mimic someone with a reverse cervical curve secondary to forward head carriage that comes with a life of desk and computer work.
This is the primary reason why we are committed to the idea of lifelong chiropractic care. You don’t need us. You only need us if you drive, work and live in the culture of today.
Be well and Be blessed. Knowledge is power. – Dr. E