Why hasn’t anyone told you this before? Not even your previous chiropractor? I think once I share it with you, it’s going to turn on a big bright light bulb in your head that will explain a lot of things…
What is the healing paradox of the spine, and why does it matter?
Your spine has more than one kind of tissue. Namely, it has muscles, ligaments (which connect bone to bone), and bones. And those tissues heal at very different rates.
One of the slooooooooowest healers in the body are the ligaments. Why? Because they are basically living ropes, which don’t receive a lot of direct blood flow. Less blood flow means less rapid healing.
At every single individual bone of your spine you have nine different ligaments that help keep the joints together. This doesn’t include that pad of cartilage called the intervertebral disc. That’s an entirely different structure from those nine ligaments.
This ligaments are able to stretch a little bit and act like ropes, but they also have a little stretch sensor inside them to tell your brain what is happening with your joints and their position.
Any time one of these nine ligaments is stretched beyond limit, stressed, torn, frayed, pinched, or compressed it causes some damage.
The catch-22 of spinal healing?
So, here is the paradox part.
In order for the best spine healing to happen, the ligaments need to heal. All nine. In order for the ligaments to heal the spinal bones need to be moving toward healthy alignment with normal motion.
But, in order to keep that healthy alignment over time, the ligaments need to heal.
So alignment is ligament healing. Ligament healing is alignment. One depends on the other. They both have to come simultaneously or not at all.
It’s the classic chicken-egg problem. And the more we can restore normal mechanics to your spine system, the greater your healing potential becomes.
Is a light bulb going off in your head? if you’ve had a previous chiropractor you may wonder why no one has told you this before.
I’ve had multiple chiropractors and a light went off in my head when this was finally explained to me by a chiropractor with 35+ years experience, as I asked him why some people just seem to hold their alignment and heal faster than others.
I hope this has been helpful!
Let’s keep you holding and your ligaments healing. That will give us the greatest potential for sustainable, long term results.
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