Osteochondrosis: treatment, symptoms, signs, causes

Here is another pathology that is considered age-related, but often occurs without any relationship 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 that old age could come so soon . . . Some people see these years as mature, some are more accustomed to referring them to almost adolescence, and to some, 60 do not seem to be a reason for feeling unwell. But resolutely everyone will agree that for the aging process it is, to put it mildly, not yet an age.

What's the problem? In reality, it is multifaceted and may seem complicated to a layman. But in reality there is nothing complicated about it. In the section on herniated spinal disc, we said that its contents are water with proteins dissolved in it, right? So, all osteochondrosis, together with its speed, severity and treatment prognosis, is, in fact, based on these proteins. What do we mean? Now everything will become clear.

The proteins in the "filling" for the intervertebral disc are called glycosaminoglycans. Maybe we don't need to remember this name.

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

Of course, water itself is too fluid to do something like this. This is why the body synthesizes special proteins - unique! analogue of food gelling agents like carrageenan, gums, starch.

In order for the contents of the intervertebral disc (and it, we recall, is the basis of its cushioning properties) to remain in order, we need throughout life:

• monitor what we eat, avoiding 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 injury and infection of the tissues of the spine;
• maintain the rate of water-salt metabolism in the body.

Symptoms of osteochondrosis

So, at the very beginning, our back will start "tap-dancing" to the beat of our every movement. However, for quite a long time this crunch can only be heard. In the future, there will come a period of sensations - constant pulling, aching pains and discomfort in the areas affected by osteochondrosis. They make themselves felt at rest, and with movement they increase gradually. Subjectively, patients note that the joints affected by the process seem to get tired faster than others. Accordingly, as the feeling of fatigue intensifies, aching pain also grows.

But this, of course, is far from the end of the process, although it is no longer the beginning. After all, 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.

Each such sound is now accompanied by a burst of dull pain both at the place of its appearance and in nearby tissues of any type. It seems to spread as an extensive painful wave from one 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, aching, throbbing, constant, evenly spread over the entire head. It coincides with an increase in neck pain and is similar to headaches that appear with surges in blood pressure. As a rule, with osteochondrosis, too high pressure leads to a headache;
• unmotivated attacks of dizziness throughout the day: with sudden changes in posture, head movements, shaking. 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 at the moment the intracranial pressure is reduced, and not excessive, as in the previous example. As a rule, these two symptoms are alternately observed 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;
• aching 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. But touching the spinal column in this area or trying to massage the muscles gives soreness and stiffness of the muscle fiber. Subsequently, the pain is permanent, increases with turning the head to the side, bending to the chest, after sleeping on a high or too soft pillow;
• aching pains in the chest (as if under the ribs), under the scapula, with a return to the shoulder and upper chest 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 little on the respiratory rhythm. With osteochondrosis, it is constant, aggravates with each breath, lasts for periods of up to several days or more;
• "Lumbago" along the entire line of the shoulder, often down to the tips of the fingers. As a rule, depending on the degree of progress of osteochondrosis, the patient suffers at the same time either by short-term "lumbago" to the shoulder joint, or by bouts of numbness and prolonged acute "lumbago" along the entire inner surface of the arm. As for the infringement of the small neurons of the shoulder, it does not make itself felt at rest, but sharply aggravates 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 into 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 with cervical osteochondrosis, the sensitivity and mobility of the tongue decreases. Patients may become unable to distinguish some tastes (not to recognize bitter, sour, sweet, but it is easy to name 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:

• aching, drawing pain in the chest, "somewhere under the ribs. "Unlike coronary heart disease, the patient finds it difficult to determine its center more accurately. Such pain significantly depends on the rhythm of breathing - it increases with inspiration and with coughing. And for all the uncertainty of its location in the chest, each such attack clearly echoes in the causal vertebra / vertebrae. In 99 cases out of 100, it is the displaced vertebra that hurts the most;
• disturbances in the sensitivity and mobility of the pulmonary diaphragm - the appearance of a feeling of incomplete inhalation, inability to perform the lower exhalation;
• pain and discomfort in the gastrointestinal tract - especially often the stomach, upper intestines, liver and pancreas. The pain can range from mild, inaudible discomfort to obvious cramping. Therefore, osteochondrosis of the thoracic region is often mistaken for sluggish gastritis, enteritis, colitis, chronic pancreatitis.

Lumbar osteochondrosis symptoms

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

With him we will have:

• Aching pain in the lower back, aggravated by bending over, sitting for a long time or standing - in general, almost any body movement. As a rule, it disturbs the sick at night, in the presence of the habit of sleeping on the back, with straightened legs. It subsides only with prolonged stay or the habit of sleeping in the fetal position. That is, with the knees tucked into the chest. Patients with lumbar osteochondrosis quickly and voluntarily switch from a soft bed to a hard one, since it is easier to maintain the embryo's position on a hard floor throughout the night;
• lumbar stiffness syndrome. It implies: the 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 advancing numbness in the lumbar region when sitting or standing, associated with acute infringement of the nerve endings in this position of the vertebrae;
• entrapment of the sciatic nerve (the main neural trunk for the legs, entering the spine in the coccyx region). With osteochondrosis of the lumbosacral region, it belongs to the number of sciatica scenarios, although not the only one. Despite the existence of several other variants, sciatica is often a painful complication of osteochondrosis.

Treatment of osteochondrosis

We will have to undergo treatment for a long time, so first we will improve the quality of life of our own back.

1. Let's remove the feather bed and feather pillow from the bed. Let's leave one main mattress, get an orthopedic pillow - dense, low, with a fixed depression in the middle. Typically, these pillows are made of padding polyester. Therefore, you need to make sure that it is not too soft - now it is harmful for us. And the likelihood that it "blown away", turning into a flat pancake in a week, is very high. The thickness of the roller 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 will buy another not too thick pillow or use our old feather in a new quality. From now on, we will always need to 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 instant disappearance of pain in the most noticeable focus in this particular position.
3. It is strictly forbidden to lift and carry any 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, since cardio (treadmill, bike, skiing) and fitness are not the same. We now, by all means, need to organize our back additional support and work with strictly the same, correct body position. The best for such purposes is a simulator - a steel frame, in which both we and the weight being lifted can only move in an amplitude limited by the structure.
4. After any exertion (including routine upright walking), we should carry out a light massage of the back, gently stretching it. Heat can be applied to places of particularly intense back pain - provided that 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-minute" on a mat like the Lyapko applicator turns out to be five times more effective than any heating pad. After all, we really can't buy a warming mattress instead! Moreover, in the warm season, heating such a vast area runs the risk of ending in heatstroke . . .

If we understand all this, 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 with this - it is better to work with a professional orthopedist or an instructor where there is equipment that can compensate for the strength deficiencies that have arisen in our spine. But since, alas, not everyone has such an opportunity, we still dare to recommend some warm-up exercises with a reduced likelihood 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 starting training, we definitely need to order or buy a special medical bandage or corset. A bandage for reliable fixation of exactly that part of the back where there is a pathological process. You should work only in it, providing the problematic section of the spine with support, which it currently lacks.

So:

1. We will sit close at the table, the lid of which 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 lean back with our whole backs on the back of the chair, stretch our arms, sliding them along the lid, to the maximum. It is even necessary to slouch a little, pushing the shoulder blades forward, but for this it is forbidden to tear off the back of the head or back from the support. On the line where our palms remain in this position, an object weighing more than 10 kg should be put. Its shape and surface should be comfortable, since then we will need to take this object with our palms slightly from below and pull it towards ourselves, without lifting it from the surface. You need to move it not so much with your hands as with the effort of the scapular muscles, which are now trying to return the forearms extended forward to their normal position. As you can see, we are talking about a "domesticated" and slightly adjusted rowing machine for our needs. More precisely, its modification, implying a simple pull of weight on oneself. In any case, this exercise develops well the muscles of the middle of the back - between the shoulder blades, as well as the lats. After we pull the weight towards us, it should be shifted back and the traction should be repeated 15 more times.
2. Let's stand close to the table already familiar to us and rest our pelvic bones on the edge of the lid. Let's put our hands behind our heads, let our heads drop so that our foreheads are resting on the table. At the same time, the back should not be rounded - we will round it later. For now, 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 in the future, if we fall on the table, we will be our whole face, not our forehead. Therefore, above the lid itself, we should linger, avoiding relying on it.
3. We use one of the exercises detailed in the section on the prevention of back diseases. Namely: we lie prone on the floor, arms extended above our head, with straight legs folded together. Lift one (any) arm from the floor and stretch forward at the same time, as well as the opposite leg. Of course, you should not try to throw your leg over your head, but pull it back with a kick motion. Then lower the limbs, count in the mind to three and repeat with another pair of "hand-opposite leg". In total, you need to do 20 reps for both pairs of limbs.
4. We sit on the floor, with our backs to the wall, with our legs stretched out in front of us. Do not rest our backs too tightly on the wall and rest our palms securely on the floor. Now we need to raise the body on one hand above the floor as high as we can. It is better to keep the legs straight while maintaining their sitting position. If it doesn't work out with straight lines, you can try to squeeze them to your chest. In this case, you will have to take into account that changing the position of the legs will shift the center of gravity and require you to lean your head against the wall. Repeat 5-7 times.
5. We will get a special belt for weightlifting - wide, made of thick skin that perfectly fixes the lower back. In milder forms of osteochondrosis, it is quite possible to leave only the bandage fixing the diseased area. Take in the bathroom a 15-liter basin or bucket that we use on the farm. We fill it with water so that it does not splash over the edges, we take it out to any free space. Dishes with water should be placed on the floor, legs should be slightly apart and bent in. knees for stability, slightly move the body forward. We should get a very ambiguous pose - a slight forward bend, with a noticeably set back buttocks, but an even line of the spine in the upper torso. This is completely normal and correct from the point of view of the anatomy of the human body. When the desired position is reached, we should still sit down until we can grasp the handles of the pelvis without rounding the back. After that, the pelvis must be raised, with a synchronized movement straightening the knees and lower back.

As mentioned above, self-massage is easier for most people to understand intuitively, relying on the sensations in the process. And we recommend that you simply regularly (daily) conduct an independent session with a massager, finding out the structural features of your back - with all its pathologies and proportions. All the same, there are no two identical spins in the world. So no masseur or doctor will study this organ better than us. Meanwhile, individual details of 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, malformations.

Nevertheless, here are some recommendations related to the nuances of massage of various departments. Indeed, in the original they are known only to 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 bring patients the relief they hoped for. After all, the shoulder girdle is the most massive in the whole body, and skeletal muscles are nowhere "hidden" so deeply as here.

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

• When massaging aching deltoid muscles, their outer edge is easiest to "reach" by pressing a finger from above into the depression between the clavicle and the "bump" of the shoulder joint. You should not press your finger too hard - there. in addition to the muscle, the ligaments of the shoulder are also located. However, as we knead the stiff head of the muscle, we will begin to more accurately distinguish between its soft fiber and the springy ligamentous 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, continuing to work 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 chest. But under the head of the deltoid muscle there is a number of skeletal muscles, and it completely closes them from manipulation from above. Meanwhile, the lion's share of osteochondrosis "discharges" passes through their fibers. Therefore, we need to lie on our backs on a soft surface.

The middle of the back will give us less problems with the number of muscle fibers itself. 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, as it were, goes under them. This is especially true for the shoulder blades, to which all the muscles of 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 tormented by burning or shooting pains "somewhere under 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 need 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 should be tightly wound from above, behind the back of the head. Inconvenient, but effective. It is better to massage the middle part under the shoulder blade with a hard massager - we will hardly reach with our fingers, and therefore we will not be able to press. To increase the area to which we reach, a pillow can be placed under the elbow of the working hand;
• how to stretch the upper corners of the latissimus dorsi, putting his hand on top, even the genius of acrobatics will not be able to. The lats are the muscles that enable bodybuilders and physically well-developed individuals in general to demonstrate the classic V-shaped extension of the back from the torso to the shoulders. It is them 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 the arms and lower back cannot be overestimated, therefore they need not only to 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 lats massage, it is better to use a lying position on your side. In this case, for stability, the legs should be pulled closer to the stomach, the working hand should be pulled forward along the bed and brought under the armpit of the massaged arm. For convenience, the hand to be massaged does not need to be kept lowered along the side - it is more appropriate to also lower it on the bed at chest level. Then the lower edge of the scapula will stretch after it, and the lats are immediately attached to it.

The lumbar region has its own structural features. Firstly, the same row of small skeletal muscles runs along the spine here, moving the vertebrae when turning. Secondly, in this place, many muscles coming from above are attached to the sacrum. That is, connecting the lower back to the upper - in fact, allowing you to maintain and maintain throughout life the rate of the S-shaped back curvature. By the way, 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 the lats. Without her health, we will not see a normal S-shaped bend as our ears. And the sacrum and tailbone 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 one - right up to the sacral bones, that is, to the coccyx. Therefore, if straight from the armpit we walk with our fingers or a massager down along the side, we will knead a muscle that is equally related to both the back and the abdomen - the oblique abdominal muscle. This is not the lats, which connects the lower back to the shoulder - the oblique muscle is responsible for tilting the body strictly to the side. Mostly for successfully straightening out of this tilt. She suffers greatly 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 tibial joint. One is located closer to the buttock (merges with its uppermost lobe), and the second goes slightly forward, to the groin area. So if we take it as a habit to massage the entire area around the protrusions of the pelvic bones, it will definitely not become superfluous;
• if for some reason (most often because of pain) we decide to warm up the buttocks, it is better to do this while lying on our side, tucking our knees to the chest. This position makes all gluteal muscles available for massage. For the first time, the buttocks may seem to us very painful and as if composed entirely of tendon tissue - they will be so dense to the touch. In reality, they shouldn't 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 array of gluteal muscles is no less than the array of the shoulder muscles. This is what we need to achieve without looking at any burning pain.