April, 2023 Blog post

Gravity will always win, but it doesn’t have to defeat you.

One of the basic laws of the Universe, the Law of Entropy, is “Order will move towards disorder (chaos, randomness, uncertainty)”, and your body is no different.  This is why you brush your teeth, scrub your skin, move and stretch your muscles.  All this to maintain order in your own personal universe.  If you neglect this maintenance, you tend to encourage disorder at a more rapid rate.

The vertebrae of your spine undergo a battle against gravity every day you stand up and move around, and if you do not monitor your “posture”, there will be uneven wear and tear which leads to disorder.  This will manifest itself as arthritis, decreased disc space and potentially, bulging discs in between the vertebrae.  For most of you, this degenerative joint disease is manageable and shouldn’t lead to pain and dysfunction; only perhaps a reduction of flexibility and stability.  Life goes on.

If, however, you have been overly “entropic” most of your life, you will have probably created problems for yourself, most dramatically that of sciatica or nerve pain into your arms and hands.  The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in your body and exits from your lumbar spine/sacrum and down through your butt muscles (piriformis) to control the functions of your legs.  Any compression from a worn out or misaligned vertebrae can lead to some form of sciatic dysfunction, such as pain, numbness, weakness or temperature change somewhere in your thighs, legs or feet.

If you ever experience sciatica, the least invasive and most direct action is to decompress the vertebrae and release pressure off the nerve.  I do this with a Cox flexion-distraction table, which stretches and mobilizes the vertebral joints, along with muscle releasing and teaching you specific stretches and strengthening exercises the reduce the continual compression on the nerves.  If you know of anyone who suffers from this fairly common problem, they can call and ask me questions about their condition.  Usually, I can help restore order out of the chaos.

Dr. Ben

 

Call Us Text Us
Skip to content