Degenerative disc disease (DDD) is commonly associated with aging. As you get older, your discs, like other joints within the body, can degenerate (break down) and become problematic: That’s a natural part of growing older, the body begins to deal with years of strain, overuse, and perhaps even misuse.
Nonetheless, DDD can appear in people as young as 20, so regrettably, youth doesn’t always protect you from this disc-related spinal condition. In fact, some patients may inherit a prematurely aging spine.
Degenerative disc disease involves the intervertebral discs, or the pillow-like shock absorbers between your vertebrae in your back. These help your back carry weight and permit complex movements of the back while maintaining stability. As you get older, the discs can lose flexibility, elasticity, and shock absorbing features. Additionally they become thinner as they dehydrate. The discs change from a supple state that enables smooth movements into a stiff and rigid state that restricts your movement and causes pain.
You could have degenerative disk disease if you experience chronic back or neck pain. It normally happens in your lower back (lumbar spine) or neck (cervical spine). Developing degenerative disc disease can be a slow process.
How Does Spinal Degeneration Occur?
Degenerative disc disease (DDD) can change many parts of your spine. To understand how, you first need a basic knowledge of what makes up your back. First of all, you’ve vertebrae, labeled in the picture below as the “vertebral body.” In your back, or vertebral column, you have 33 vertebrae.
Your spine is split into separate areas:
Neck (cervical spine)
Mid-back (thoracic spine)
Low back (lumbar spine)
At the low end of your back, you additionally possess the sacrum and also the coccyx, which is often called your tailbone.
Degenerative disc disease is most likely to occur in your lumbar spine or your cervical spine.
Intervertebral Discs
In between your vertebrae, you have intervertebral discs. These act like shock absorbers or pads on your back as it moves. Each disc is composed of a tire-like outer band known as the annulus fibrosus and a gel-like inner substance called the nucleus pulposus. Degenerative disc disease alters the discs and makes them less able to cushion the movements of the spine. With DDD, your intervertebral discs also become more vulnerable to injuries or conditions; they may bulge or herniate.
Together, the vertebrae and the discs provide a protective tunnel (the spinal canal) to where the spinal cord and spinal nerves are placed. These nerves run down the center of the spine and the vertebrae to various portions of the body, where they help you move and feel.
Facet Joints
Your spine also consists of facet joints, which are joints located to the posterior side (back) of your vertebrae. These joints (like all joints in your body) help facilitate movements and are extremely important to your flexibility.
Cartilage
Your spinal joints are covered by cartilage, which shields your bones as you move. Without cartilage, your bones would rub together and could be very painful. Unfortunately, your cartilage might be affected by general damage on your own back, plus it may wear away. That’s when bone spurs (osteophytes) can form as your body attempts to repair itself.
Muscles, Blood Vessels, and Ligaments, Tendons
Your back additionally has ligaments muscles, tendons, and arteries. Muscles are fibrils of tissues that power your motion. Ligaments are the powerful, flexible bands of fibrous tissue that link the bones together, and tendons connect muscles to bones. Blood vessels provide nourishment. These parts all work together that will help you move.
Further Concerns Regarding Degenerative Disc Disease
What is DDD?
Degenerative disc disease (DDD) isn’t really a disorder�it is the regular wear and tear process of aging on your spine. Unfortunately, as we age, our intervertebral discs (pillow-like pads involving the bones in your spine) lose their flexibility, elasticity, and shock-absorbing features. When this happens, the disks shift from a supple, flexible state which allows flowing motion, into a rigid and stiff state that limits your movement.
What Causes Degenerative Disc Disease?
Degenerative disc disease is generally the result of aging, and that means you are more inclined to have it if you’re older than 50. However, younger people can have symptoms of DDD as well. Injuries also can start the process that is degenerative .
The degenerative process causes your discs to lose their capability to cushion your moves. Slowly, the collagen (protein) structure of the outer portion of your disk�the annulus fibrosus�weakens. The degenerative process also affects the water content in your discs, as well as the water content is a must to preserving movement. With the water, DDD -attracting molecules in your disks decrease, making your disks become inflexible and more stiff.
Are There Non-Surgical Options to Treat DDD?
You can attempt, to help deal with pain from degenerative disc disease:
bed rest (only several days)
restricting your actions that boost the pain
light exercise (walking, swimming, etc) as recommended by your doctor
Over the counter medications
prescription medications
When Should Surgery Be Considered for DDD?
Although degenerative disc disease patients respond well to non-operative treatments, some patients do need surgery. Surgery should really be considered only after you have tried several months of non-operative treatment. You surgeon will recommend the best kind of operation for you. Here are a few common sorts of surgery used for patients with DDD:
Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF)
Foraminotomy
Microdiscectomy
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .
By Dr. Alex Jimenez
Additional Topics: What is Chiropractic?
Chiropractic care is an well-known, alternative treatment option utilized to prevent, diagnose and treat a variety of injuries and conditions associated with the spine, primarily subluxations or spinal misalignments. Chiropractic focuses on restoring and maintaining the overall health and wellness of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems. Through the use of spinal adjustments and manual manipulations, a chiropractor, or doctor of chiropractic, can carefully re-align the spine, improving a patient�s strength, mobility and flexibility.
Korir etched himself into the UTEP recordbooks with the second-fastest time in program history, just .02 seconds behind Bert Cameron�s time of 44.58 set in 1980.
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UTEP�s freshman Emmanuel Korir was named Conference USA Athlete of the Week after his performance on Saturday at Kidd Field, announced the league office Tuesday afternoon.
The Kenyan clocked the nation�s second-fastest time of 44.67 in the 400m and broke the 37-year old stadium record (Billy Mullins, 45.03, USC, 1980).
Korir etched himself into the UTEP recordbooks with the second-fastest time in program history, just .02 seconds behind Bert Cameron�s time of 44.58 set in 1980.
This is Korir�s second weekly award of the outdoor season. Last weekend, the mid-distance runner clocked the fourth-fastest time in school history with a time of 1:47.19 in the 800m, which rates him 12th in the nation in the event.
The UTEP track and field team travel westbound to Berkley, Calif. for the Brutus Hamilton Open at Edwards Stadium. For live results and breaking news follow @UTEPTrack on Twitter.
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UTEP Director of Athletics Bob Stull announced on Monday that Kevin Baker has been appointed �
Seattle, take a bow. Jackson, hit the gym. A new study ranking the nation�s 100 fattest cities has found residents of the Mississippi city topped the scales nationally, while Jimi Hendrix�s hometown has the smallest proportion of overweight residents.
The analysis, by Wallethub.com, found that 70 percent of Americans aged 15 and older are overweight or obese � in line with statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But some cities are more likely to have more residents who hit those thresholds than others.
On balance, the south tended to rank higher in the new study, which has historically been the case, while residents of colder, northern states and the Pacific Northwest fared better.
Dr. Charles Platkin, director of the New York City Food Policy Center and Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College, City University of New York, tells Newsmax Health the new rankings aren�t entirely surprising but bring attention to regional factors that may play a role in U.S. obesity trends.
“There isn’t any major new information here,” Platkin explains. “There are a lot of variables that go into diet and obesity, including poverty levels, and diet and culture of southern states, for instance.”
The 10 fattest cities on the new list tended to be southern:
Jackson
Memphis, Tenn.
Little Rock, Ark.
McAllen, Texas
Shreveport, La.
Chattanooga, Tenn.
Mobile, Ala.
Lafayette La.
Winston-Salem, N.C.
Knoxville, Tenn.
At the other end of the spectrum, researchers found the following 10 cities to be on the lowest end of the �obesity� scale:
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash.
Portland, Ore.
Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.
Denver and Colorado Springs, Colo.
Boston-Cambridge, Mass.
The researchers, as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture, suggested a variety of factors play a role in U.S. obesity trends. Among them:
Regional variations in diet. The south is famous for barbecue, fried foods, and sweet tea; northern and coastal cities may offer a wider range of healthy options of vegetables, whole grains, and fruits. These differences in dietary patterns are influenced by social, demographic, cultural, historical, and economic factors
Poverty. Economic factors play a role in food choices and activity levels. According to the USDA, 42.2 million people live in households where access to healthy foods is limited, often because of poverty-related issues. In such households, families may not be able to afford to eat regular, balanced, healthy meals, or may turn to less-healthy alternatives to save money. Such households are more prominent in the south than the northeast, the west, and the Midwest.
Education. Schooling and personal achievement, uncertainty about jobs, and even access to good grocery stores also factor into food choices linked to obesity rates.
Activity, exercise trends. Northern metropolitan cities and other areas, such as the Denver area, that are popular places for healthy physical activities � such as hiking, skiing, and other outdoor sports � tend to rank lower in obesity scores.
Shopping habits. The shopping and dietary habits of people who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps, are other factors. Most households receiving SNAP benefits, according to the USDA, don�t consume the same quantities of fruit, whole grains, and other healthy foods as people who aren�t on receiving food assistance.
USDA research has shown that 11 states � located along the western and southern borders of the country plus the District of Columbia � have higher-than-average levels of poverty and more people receiving SNAP benefits. These factors explain, at least in part, the prevalence of obesity across southern states. There is a higher level of food insecurity and greater use of SNAP benefits.
Platkin notes the survey rankings don�t aim to solve the nation�s obesity crisis, but they could inform aggressive promotions and education � similar to what Americans have done with in past public health campaigns, such as those aimed at tobacco use.
“Look at things we have done successfully, like smoking cessation and recycling,” he says.
Culturally significant programs like food access and cooking classes might make a difference in regions of the country where obesity rates are especially high, he adds.
Combatting poverty could also lead to improvements in diet and activity levels in some cities.
“Culturally, what are the diets, how much outdoor appeal is there, physical activity, and what about binge drinking in these areas?� he says.
To check out the complete list of the nation�s 100 fattest cities, check out Wallethub.com.
Researchers in the USA have developed an ingenious system that uses virtual reality to help prevent falls by detecting and reversing balance impairments in elderly people.
The sense of balance declines in elderly people, as well as in those with neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis. This leads to greater reliance on visual cues to maintain balance and prevent falls.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and North Carolina State University (NC State) developed a system to recreate the visual illusion of losing balance, tested on volunteers walking on a treadmill. The participants walked on machines set up in front of a large screen depicting a moving hallway.
“As each person walked, we added lateral oscillations to the video imagery, so that the visual environment made them feel as if they were swaying back and forth, or falling,” explains study co-author Jason R. Franz.
The researchers used 14 cameras to record the positions of 30 reflective markers on each volunteer’s legs, back and pelvis.
In response to visual disruptions and perceived loss of balance, the volunteers took longer or shorter steps, as the scientists expected. Their head and trunk swayed further sideways with each step. The variability of these measures — their tendency to change from one step to the next — increased much more significantly.
During the experiment, the researchers analyzed muscles’ ability to respond to perceived loss of balance and identified which muscle groups worked to correct it. The researchers found that individual muscles were highly coordinated in preserving walking balance.
The scientists’ data provide important reference measurements that could be used in future clinical procedures to detect balance impairments before they start to cause individuals to fall.
This kind of system could be used as a therapeutic tool to help teach balance-impaired individuals how to improve their balance and avoid falls.
According to the study, falls lead to the hospitalization or death of hundreds of thousands of elderly Americans every year.
The study is published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
More bad news for plus-sized Americans: Obesity is the leading cause of preventable life-years lost in the nation, a new study finds.
Obesity steals more years than diabetes, tobacco, high blood pressure and high cholesterol — the other top preventable health problems that cut Americans’ lives short, according to researchers who analyzed 2014 data.
“Modifiable behavioral risk factors pose a substantial mortality burden in the U.S.,” said study lead author Glen Taksler, an internal medicine researcher at the Cleveland Clinic.
“These preliminary results continue to highlight the importance of weight loss, diabetes management and healthy eating in the U.S. population,” Taksler said in a clinic news release.
Obesity was linked with as much as 47 percent more life-years lost than tobacco, his team said.
Tobacco, meanwhile, had the same effect on life span as high blood pressure, the researchers found.
The researchers noted that three of the top five causes of life-years lost — diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol — can be treated. And helping patients understand treatment methods, options and approaches can have a significant effect, the study authors said.
The findings also emphasize the importance of preventive care, and why it should be a priority for physicians, Taksler’s team said.
However, the researchers acknowledged that some people’s situations may be different than those of the general population. For example, for someone with obesity and alcoholism, drinking may be a more important risk factor than obesity, even though obesity is more significant in the general population.
“The reality is, while we may know the proximate cause of a patient’s death — for example, breast cancer or heart attack — we don’t always know the contributing factor(s), such as tobacco use, obesity, alcohol and family history,” Taksler said. “For each major cause of death, we identified a root cause to understand whether there was a way a person could have lived longer.”
The findings were scheduled for presentation Saturday at the annual meeting of the Society of General Internal Medicine, in Washington, D.C. Research presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.
A nutrient in meat and eggs may conspire with gut bacteria to make the blood more prone to clotting, a small study suggests.
The nutrient is called choline. Researchers found that when they gave 18 healthy volunteers choline supplements, it boosted their production of a chemical called TMAO.
That, in turn, increased their blood cells’ tendency to clot. But the researchers also found that aspirin might reduce that risk.
TMAO is short for trimethylamine N-oxide. It’s produced when gut bacteria digest choline and certain other substances.
Past studies have linked higher TMAO levels in the blood to heightened risks of blood clots, heart attack and stroke, said Dr. Stanley Hazen, the senior researcher on the new study.
These findings, he said, give the first direct evidence that choline revs up TMAO production in the human gut, which then makes platelets (a type of blood cell) more prone to sticking together.
Choline is found in a range of foods, but it’s most concentrated in animal products such as egg yolks, beef and chicken.
Hazen said he and his colleagues at the Cleveland Clinic wanted to isolate the effects of choline on people’s levels of TMAO and their platelet function. So they studied supplements.
The researchers had 18 healthy adults –10 meat-eaters and eight vegetarians/vegans — take choline supplements for two months.
The supplements provided around 450 milligrams of choline daily — roughly the amount in two or three eggs, Hazen said.
One month in, the study found, the supplements had raised participants’ TMAO levels 10-fold, on average. And tests of their blood samples showed that their platelets had become more prone to clotting.
“This study gives us one of the mechanisms by which TMAO may contribute to cardiovascular disease,” said Dr. J. David Spence.
Spence, who was not involved in the study, directs the Stroke Prevention & Atherosclerosis Research Centre at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.
For the healthy people in this study, Spence said, the TMAO rise from choline might not be worrisome. But, he added, it might be a concern for people at increased risk of heart disease or stroke.
Spence suggested those individuals limit egg yolks, beef and other foods high in choline.
Hazen had similar advice. “You don’t have to become a vegetarian,” he said. “But you could try eating more plant-based foods, and more vegetarian meals.”
He also pointed to the Mediterranean diet — rich in olive oil, vegetables and fish. In an earlier study, Hazen said, his team found that a compound in olive oil seems to inhibit TMAO formation.
The new study uncovered yet another compound that may counter TMAO: low-dose aspirin.
In a separate experiment, the researchers had some participants take 85 milligrams of aspirin (a baby aspirin) a day, in addition to choline supplements. That, it turned out, lessened the rise in TMAO and the change in platelet activity.
Doctors already prescribe low-dose aspirin to certain people at risk of heart disease and stroke.
It’s possible, Hazen said, that aspirin’s effects on TMAO are one reason it helps ward off cardiovascular trouble.
The current study is small and preliminary. But it’s the latest to suggest that the gut “microbiome” plays a key role in cardiovascular disease, Spence said.
The “microbiome” refers to the trillions of bacteria that dwell in the gut. Spence said researchers are just beginning to understand how gut bacteria and their byproducts affect the cardiovascular system.
But one hope, he said, is to figure out what balance of gut bacteria supports cardiovascular health — and possibly use probiotic (“good” bacteria) supplements to help treat people at high risk of heart disease or stroke.
Spence said his own lab is working on just that.
There are, of course, many factors in heart disease risk — from age to high blood pressure to diabetes to smoking, Hazen pointed out.
“We’re saying a portion of the risk is related to the gut microbiome,” he said.
Hazen and a colleague report potential royalty payments from several companies related to “cardiovascular diagnostics and therapeutics.” One company, Cleveland HeartLab, recently launched a test for measuring TMAO levels.
The findings appear in the April 25 online issue of Circulation.
The Reno Aces scored in five different innings Monday and beat the El Paso Chihuahuas 12-1. It was the second Monday in a row that Reno handed El Paso an 11-run loss, as the Aces beat the Chihuahuas 13-2 last Monday in Reno.
Reno scored five runs in a nine-batter first inning, the second consecutive game the Aces brought in four runs or more in the first frame. Ketel Marte went 4-for-6 and came inches away from hitting for the cycle, as his second double of the game hit the top of the right field fence near the foul pole.
Former Chihuahuas outfielder Reymond Fuentes went 3-for-5 with three RBIs for Reno.
Reno’s Jake Winston picked up a three-inning save in the lopsided game. El Paso catcher Rocky Gale had three hits and a run scored in the loss. The Chihuahuas used five pitchers and got scoreless outings out of relievers Jason Jester and Keith Hessler.
With a win Tuesday, the Chihuahuas will split their eight-game homestand.
Box Score | Team Records: Reno (11-8), El Paso (8-11)
Next Game:Tuesday, 6:35 pm at Southwest University Park. Reno RHP Frank Duncan (1-2, 6.11) vs. El Paso RHP Dinelson Lamet (1-0, 0.69). The game will air on 600 ESPN El Paso and www.epchihuahuas.com.
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