Osteochondrosis: treatment, symptoms, signs, causes

Here is another pathology that is considered age-related but which often occurs without any association with age.

For example, this fact: more than half of patients with osteochondrosis around the world noticed the first signs of its development at the age of 25 years. Yes, no one thought old age could come so quickly. . . Some people see these years as mature, some are more accustomed to referring them to almost adolescence, and for some, 60 does not seem to be a reason to feel uncomfortable. But resolutely everyone will agree that for the aging process, to put it mildly, it is not an age yet.

What's the problem? In fact, it is multifaceted and can seem complicated to a layman. But in reality, there is nothing complicated about it. In the section on disc herniation we said that its content is water with proteins dissolved in it, right? So all osteochondrosis, along with its rate, severity, and treatment projections, are actually built on these proteins. What do we mean? Now everything will be clear.

The proteins in the "filling" of the intervertebral disc are called glycosaminoglycans. Maybe we do not need to remember this name.

But we must certainly remember that the main purpose of glycosaminated dicans is to retain water. In addition, with the possibility of gradual release under pressure. In other words, the proteins that create the jelly-like texture of the "filler" for the slice are made so that the water inside it is heated at rest, and under load it is gradually squeezed out.

Of course, water itself is too liquid to do such a thing. That is why the body synthesizes special proteins - unique! analogue of food gelling agents such as carrageenan, gums, starch.

In order for the contents of the intervertebral disc (and that, we remember, is the basis of its damping properties) to remain in order, we need all of life:

• monitor what we eat, avoid deficiencies of vital substances, especially proteins;
• avoid muscle cramps in the back;
• maintain active circulation of cerebrospinal fluid and blood in it to normalize metabolic processes in the tissues of the spine;
• avoid damage and infection in the tissues of the spine;
• maintain the rate of water-salt metabolism in the body.

Symptoms of osteochondrosis

So in the very beginning, our backs will start to "tap-dance" with each movement. But for quite some time this crunch can only be heard. In the future, there will be a period of sensations - constant pulling, sore pain and discomfort in the areas affected by osteochondrosis. They make the mark at rest, and with movement they gradually increase. Subjectively, patients notice that the joints affected by the process appear to get tired faster than others. As a result, as the feeling of fatigue intensifies, sore pain also grows.

But this, of course, is far from the end of the process, though it is no longer the beginning. The condition of the disc does not improve, and the condition of the cartilage deteriorates as the situation drags on, and very quickly. Over time, the crunches themselves become painful.

Every such sound is now accompanied by an outburst of dull pain both at the site of its appearance and in nearby tissues of any type. It appears to spread like a comprehensive painful wave from a point in the joint - exactly according to the laws of resonance.

Symptoms of cervical osteochondrosis

If we have problems with the cervical spine, we may feel:

• headache resistant to standard treatment - dull, tender, throbbing, constant, evenly distributed throughout the head. It coincides with an increase in neck pain and is similar to headaches that occur with increases in blood pressure. Usually with osteochondrosis, too much pressure leads to headaches;
• unmotivated bouts of dizziness during the day: with sudden changes in posture, head movements, trembling. Often dizziness coincides with the rhythm of breathing - a dangerous "lightness" in the head appears with each inhalation and disappears during exhalation. Such symptomatology means that the intracranial pressure is currently reduced and not too high, as in the previous example. As a rule, these two symptoms are observed alternately in all patients with cervical osteochondrosis, occur periodically and last for several days. Sometimes one replaces the other, sometimes they are separated by periods of relative pressure;
• sore pain in the neck, especially at the base of the skull. In the initial stages, it is expressed by vague discomfort during the day and a crunch when turning the head. However, touching the spine in this area or attempting to massage the muscles causes soreness and stiffness in the muscle fiber. Subsequently, the pain is permanent, increasing by turning the head to the side, bending to the chest, after sleeping on a high or too soft pillow;
• tender pain in the chest (as under the ribs), under the scapula, with a return to the shoulder and upper pectoral muscles. They resemble an attack of angina pectoris or coronary artery disease as much as pain in a herniated disc, but are more permanent. For example, in diseases of the cardiovascular system, pain rarely lasts more than a few hours and depends only slightly on the respiratory rhythm. With osteochondrosis, it is constant, worsening with each breath, lasting for periods of up to several days or more;
• "Lumbago" along the entire shoulder, often down to the fingertips. As a rule, depending on the degree of progression of osteochondrosis, the patient suffers at the same time either from short-term "lumbago" to the shoulder joint or from bouts of numbness and prolonged acute "lumbago" along the entire inner surface of the arm. As for the violation of the small neurons in the shoulder, it does not make itself felt at rest, but worsens greatly with the first movements of the head after a long immobility. Patients describe it as "electrical discharges along the spine, in the muscles of the shoulders. And irradiation in the hand is often accompanied by a spasm of the muscles of the wrist and a violation of the sensitivity of the ring finger as well as the little finger;
• quite often, although in less than half of all cases of cervical osteochondrosis, the sensitivity and mobility of the tongue decrease. Patients may be unable to distinguish some flavors (not recognizing bitter, sour, sweet, but it is easy to mention a mixed taste). Some people report changes in diction, especially when it is necessary to speak quickly and / or clearly.

Symptoms of osteochondrosis of the thoracic region

Signs of thoracic osteochondrosis:

• sore, drawing pain in the chest, "somewhere under the ribs. " Unlike coronary heart disease, the patient has difficulty determining its center more accurately. Such pain depends significantly on the rhythm of breathing - it increases with inspiration and with coughing. And despite all the uncertainty about its location in the chest, every such attack is clearly echoed in the causal vortex / vortices. In 99 cases out of 100, it is the displaced vertebra that hurts the most;
• disturbances in the sensitivity and mobility of the lung membrane - the appearance of a feeling of incomplete inhalation, inability to perform the lower exhalation;
• pain and discomfort in the gastrointestinal tract - especially often stomach, upper intestines, liver and pancreas. The pain can range from mild, inaudible discomfort to obvious cramps. Therefore, osteochondrosis of the thoracic region is often confused with sluggish gastritis, enteritis, colitis, chronic pancreatitis.

Lumbar osteochondrosis symptoms

Lumbar osteochondrosis, also called lumbago (so we know it is one and the same), is the most common form of the disease.

With him we want:

• Low back pain, aggravated by bending, sitting for a long time or standing - generally almost any body movement. As a rule, it disturbs the sick at night, in the presence of the habit of sleeping on their backs, with straightened legs. It only decreases during prolonged stays or the habit of sleeping in the fetal position. That is, with the knees tucked into the chest. Patients with lumbar osteochondrosis switch quickly and voluntarily from a soft bed to a hard one, as it is easier to maintain the position of the embryo on a hard floor all night;
• lumbar stiffness syndrome. It involves: inability to quickly bend down after a long standing or sitting, associated not so much with pain as with a general decrease in muscle extensibility and stiffness of bones in the affected area; rapidly progressing numbness in the lower back when sitting or standing, associated with acute violation of the nerve endings in this position of the vertebrae;
• capture of the sciatic nerve (the most important neural stem for the bones entering the spine in the coccyx region). With osteochondrosis of the lumbosacral region, it belongs to the number of sciatica scenarios, although it is not the only one. Despite the fact that there are several other variants, sciatica is often a painful complication of osteochondrosis.

Treatment of osteochondrosis

We need a long time in treatment, so first we want to improve the quality of life on our own back.

1. Let's remove the feather bed and the feather pillow from the bed. Let's leave one main mattress, get an orthopedic pillow - dense, low, with a firm recess in the middle. Typically, these pillows are made of padding polyester. Therefore, make sure that it is not too soft - now it is harmful to us. And the probability of it "blowing away", turning into a flat pancake in a week, is very high. The thickness of the roll along the edges should be equal to the length of our neck from the base of the skull to the 7th vertebra that protrudes when the head is tilted. If it is 1, 5-2 cm lower, the better.
2. We buy another not too thick pillow or use our old feathers in a new quality. From now on, we should always put this pillow under the thighs or buttocks in the supine position, as well as under the upper knee when we sleep in the fetal position. Let's experiment with the optimal height, width and position of the pillow - the right thing, placed in the right place, will bring the immediate disappearance of pain in the most noticeable focus in this particular position.
3. It is strictly forbidden to lift and carry objects weighing more than 10 kg in case of osteochondrosis. Therefore, any training should take place with us with your own or minimum weight. With any type of osteochondrosis, it is wiser for us not to do it on our own, but to go to the gym. It is in the gym as cardio (treadmill, bike, skiing) and fitness are not the same. We must now by all means organize our backs further support and work with strictly the same, correct body position. The best for such purposes is a simulator - a steel frame where both we and the weight being lifted can only move in an amplitude limited by the structure.
4. After every effort (including routine upright walking), we should perform a light massage of the back, gently stretching it. Heat can be applied in places with particularly intense back pain - provided the pain focus does not migrate along with the change in posture, of course. And since in osteochondrosis pain migration is a frequent phenomenon, sometimes a simple "five minutes" on a mat like the Lyapko applicator proves to be five times more effective than any heating pad. We really can not buy a heating mattress instead! In addition, heating such a large area in the hot season risks ending with heatstroke. . .

If we understand all this, we take into account and are sure that we will not forget, we will organize the activation of metabolic processes for our spine. As already mentioned, you should not exercise at home with osteochondrosis. More precisely, one should not get carried away by this - it is better to work with a professional orthopedist or an instructor where there is equipment that can compensate for the lack of strength that has arisen in our spine. However, as not everyone has such an opportunity, we still dare to recommend some warm-up exercises with a reduced probability of complications.

There is only one rule here that should not be broken. Namely: If we decided to take everything into our own hands before we start exercising, we should definitely order or buy a special medical bandage or corset. A bandage for reliable fixation of exactly the part of the back where there is a pathological process. You should only work in it and give the problematic part of the spine support that it is currently lacking.

So:

1. We would sit close to the table whose lid would have rested against our stomach, on a chair with a narrow and high back. We must have firm support for both the back and the back of the head. Let us sit back with the whole back on the back of the chair, stretch our arms, slide them maximally along the lid. It is even necessary to lean a little, pushing the shoulder blades forward, but for this it is forbidden to tear the back of the head or the back of the support. On the line where our palms remain in this position, an object weighing more than 10 kg must be placed. Its shape and surface should be comfortable as we will have to take this object with the palms slightly from below and pull it towards ourselves without lifting it from the surface. You should move it not so much with your hands as with the exertion of the shoulder blade muscles, which are now trying to return the forearms stretched forward to their normal position. As you can see, this is a "tame" and easily adapted rowing machine to our needs. More precisely, its modification, which implies a simple emphasis on itself. In any case, this exercise develops well the muscles in the middle of the back - between the shoulder blades, as well as lats. After we pull the weight towards us, it must be moved back and the traction must be repeated 15 times more.
2. Let us stand close to the table we already know and rest our pelvis on the edge of the lid. Let's put our hands behind our heads, let our heads fall so that our foreheads rest on the table. At the same time, the back should not be rounded - we will round it later. So far, our task is to make 15 bends to the table itself with a straight back and hands on the back of the head. The correct position of the body means that if we fall on the table in the future, we will be our whole face, not our forehead. Therefore, over the lid itself, we should hang on and avoid relying on it.
3. We use one of the exercises described in the section on the prevention of back diseases. Namely: we lie stretched out on the floor, arms outstretched over our heads, with straight legs folded together. Lift one (any) arm off the floor and at the same time stretch forward, as well as the opposite leg. Of course, do not try to throw the leg over your head, but pull it back with a kicking motion. Then lower the limbs, count in mind to three and repeat with another pair of "hand-opposite legs". In total, do 20 reps for both pairs of limbs.
4. We sit on the floor, with our backs to the wall, with our legs outstretched in front of us. Do not let our back rest too tightly on the wall and rest your palms securely on the floor. Now we need to raise the body of one hand above the floor as high as we can. It is better to keep the legs straight while maintaining their sitting position. If straight lines fail, try squeezing them to your chest. In this case, take into account that changing the position of the leg will move the center of gravity and require you to lean your head against the wall. Repeat 5-7 times.
5. We get a special belt for weightlifting - wide, made of thick skin that perfectly fixes the lower back. In milder forms of osteochondrosis, it is very possible to only let the bandage fix the diseased area. In the bathroom, take a 15-liter basin or bucket, which we use in the yard. We fill it with water so it does not spray over the edges, we take it out to any available space. Dishes with water should be placed on the floor, legs should be slightly apart and bent inwards. knees for stability, move the body slightly forward. We should get a very ambiguous pose - a slight forward bend with a noticeably reclined buttocks, but a smooth line in the spine of the upper torso. This is completely normal and correct from the anatomy of the human body. Once the desired position is reached, we should still sit down until we can grasp the pelvic handle without rounding the back. Then the pelvis should be raised, with a synchronized movement that straightens the knees and lower back.

As mentioned above, self-massage is easier for most people to understand intuitively, as they are dependent on the sensations in the process. And we recommend that you simply regularly (daily) conduct an independent session with a massager, where you find out the structural features of your back - with all its pathologies and proportions. Yet there are no two identical spins in the world. So no masseur or doctor will study this body better than us. Meanwhile, individual details about the structure of our back can be extremely important here. Especially if only one part of the spine is affected, or its damage includes "aggravating circumstances" in the spirit of curvature, hernia, deformities.

Nevertheless, here are some recommendations related to the nuances of massage of different departments. In fact, in the original they are known only by specialists and are often omitted in the popular presentation of massage techniques. So:

With cervical osteochondrosis, the process affects both types of muscles equally often and strongly. Therefore, a regular, albeit in-depth massage does not always give patients the relief they were hoping for. After all, the shoulder girdle is the most massive in the whole body, and skeletal muscles are nowhere "hidden" as deep as here.

And for complete satisfaction with the result, we will take into account several provisions where it will be easier to get to them:

• When massaging sore deltoid muscles, their outer edge is easiest to "reach" by pressing a finger from above into the recess between the collarbone and the "bulge" of the shoulder joint. Do not press your finger too hard - there. in addition to the muscle, the shoulder ligament is also located. But as we knead the stiff head of the muscle, we will begin to more accurately distinguish between its soft fiber and the resilient ligament apparatus. It is necessary to work exclusively with a soft head, kneading it with twisting movements. Then you can go up and 2-3 cm up along the shoulder line, continue working from above;
• the inner edge of the deltoid (the most problematic shoulder muscle in everyday life) is attached to the 7th vertebra. He acts stronger than others when we, as they say, bow our heads to our chests. But under the head of the deltoid muscle there are a number of skeletal muscles and it covers them completely from manipulation from above. Meanwhile, the majority of osteochondrosis passes "discharges" through their fibers. Therefore, we must lie on our backs on a soft surface.

The middle of the back will give us fewer problems with the actual number of muscle fibers. However, their design is very complex - in the sense that most of the muscle heads here are not attached to the edges of the bones, but so to speak go under them. This is especially true for the shoulder blades, to which all the muscles in the middle are attached to one side, but none of these attachments are located directly on the edge of the bone or on top of it:

• if we are plagued by burning or shooting pains "somewhere below the scapula", it does not matter whether they are observed at the top of the scapula, below or even in the middle. The fact is that in the usual lying position we will not reach these places. We have to lie down so that the massaged hand hangs freely from the bed and lies on the floor. The working hand is always the opposite, and it must be tightly wrapped from above, behind the back of the head. Impractical but effective. It is better to massage the middle part under the shoulder blade with a hard massager - we hardly reach with the fingers, and therefore we will not be able to press. To increase the area we reach, a pillow can be placed under the elbow of the working hand;
• how to stretch the upper corners of latissimus dorsi, put his hand on top, even that genius of acrobatics will not be able to. Lats are the muscles that allow bodybuilders and physically well-developed individuals to generally demonstrate the classic V-shaped extension of the back from the torso to the shoulders. These are the ones that the rowing machine develops well - the pull of heavy objects to the chest. They are located in the upper back and strictly on the sides. The value of the developed lats for the strength of arms and loins can not be overestimated, therefore, they must not only be developed but also to monitor their condition. Moreover, the vast majority of people do not follow them at all, and in ordinary life they are used directly very rarely. For lat massage, it is better to use a supine position on the side. In this case, for stability, the legs should be pulled closer to the abdomen, the working hand should be pulled forward along the bed and brought under the armpit of the arm being massaged. For convenience, the hand to be massaged does not need to be lowered along the side - it is more appropriate to lower it on the bed at chest height as well. Then the lower edge of the scapula will extend after it and the lats will be immediately attached to it.

The lumbar region has its own structural features. First, the same row of small skeletal muscles runs along the spine here, moving the vertebrae as they rotate. Second, in this place, many muscles coming from above are attached to the sacrum. That is, connecting the lower back with the upper - actually allows you to maintain and maintain the speed of the S-shaped back curvature throughout life. For this reason, for this reason, weakness in the middle of the back (scoliosis) is often accompanied by curvature of the lower back - lordosis and kyphosis. The main muscle of the lumbar spine is lats. Without her health, we would not see a normal S-shaped bend like our ears. And the sacrum and coccyx will hurt us just constantly, even without osteochondrosis.

So let's start:

• it should be remembered that the latissimus dorsi muscle goes strongly obliquely: its upper edge is attached to the lower part of the scapula, and the lower - as far as to sacral bones, that is, to the coccyx. Therefore, if we go straight from the armpit with the fingers or a massager down the side, we will knead a muscle that is equally related to both back and abdomen - the oblique abdominal muscle. These are not lats that connect the lumbar region to the shoulder - the oblique muscle is responsible for tilting the body strictly to the side. Mostly to successfully straighten out this tilt. She suffers a lot from scoliosis and pelvic lesions. Its main section for us is the lower one, near the femur itself. There are two heads with which it is attached to the shin joint. One is located closer to the buttocks (merges with its upper lobe), and the other goes slightly forward, to the groin area. So if we take it as a habit to massage the whole area around the protrusion of the pelvic bones, it certainly will not become superfluous;
• if for some reason (most often due to pain) we decide to warm up the buttocks, it is better to do this while lying on our side and putting our knees to the chest. This position makes all gluteal muscles available for massage. For the first time, the buttocks can seem very painful to us and as if they consist exclusively of tendon tissue - they will be so tight to the touch. In fact, they should not be like that - it's a spasm. It is especially noticeable in the upper lobes and the middle part. Normally, the finger in the middle of the buttocks should be freely pressed to the depth of one phalanx - the row of gluteal muscles is not less than the row of shoulder muscles. This is what we need to achieve without looking at any burning pain.