Cracking Your Spine DIY Dangers vs Chiropractic Care

Cracking your back at home might feel good, but it can hurt your spine if done incorrectly. Seeing a chiropractor ensures safe adjustments and personalized advice for a healthy back. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here, and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask the Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford Icehogs. Let's dive into it. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Ask the Chiropractor. So there's a question we get asked a lot. Maybe not so much ass a lot, but people, we can tell they're doing this a lot, or we see a lot, or recently Yahoo News just did an article on this, and I think they did a really poor job, especially the chiropractor describing it. It's, can I go ahead and crack my own back? Is that good or bad for me? A lot of times patients come in here and say, I need you to look at my hips, I can't get that one to go like you do. And that's a very true statement. You can't get it to go the way I do it because you can't adjust yourself. Trust me, I've been on vacations hiking and doing stuff out in the mountains and I could adjust my wife and help her out, but man, I wish I could adjust myself. My grandfather practiced in Byron, Illinois and he started practice in 1949. It wasn't until 1973 that he figured out how to get adjusted. And that's because my uncle Roger graduated chiropractic school and can now take care of him. When I graduated chiropractic school and I went out to Colorado where my dad was, he had a table in his cabin in the woods up there and he was so happy because I could finally adjust. My dad, he could finally get an adjustment. Can I crack my own back? The answer is no. Now, you've heard me say before you can crack your knuckles. It does not give you arthritis. That is true. There's a research paper on that where one doctor only did his one hand, never his other hand. Personally, I think any guy that can crack only one hand and not the other hand is not somebody I want to hang out with. That guy sounds really weird and odd to me, but nevertheless, he did that and he never got arthritis in his hands. So why can you crack your knuckles but not your own neck? Here's why. When I go to do your finger, I will pull on it and do a full crimp and go like this on it in order to get it. The exact same angle, line of drive, and correction that you would do to yourself. I can do your fingers or you can do your own fingers. It's the exact same thing whether I'm pulling on them or you're pulling on them. It's the same thing. Now, when it comes to your neck, and your thoracic spine, your lumbar spine, I will tell you that you can't get the angles you need to get in order to open up the joints properly. What I mean by properly is when we were in school, we learned that the disc is in the front, And the vertebral body in between and there's an arch that goes in the back. Halfway across this arch, all the back of the arch, excuse me, is the spinous process. Those are the bones you feel but halfway between the arch, between the spinous process and the body There's another joint called your facet joints. And in your cervical spine, these lay somewhat flat to hold the weight of the head. In your thoracic spine, they go more up and down to help articulate with your rib cage. In your lower back, they turn inwards. This is why we tell you not to bend and twist in your lower back, but it's okay to bend and twist your neck because these joints are sitting differently. Now, in order to adjust somebody, chiropractic adjustment, we have to think about the way those joints sit and the way they articulate with the vertebrae above or below them. So we have different lines of drives and angles that we use for different parts of your spine. Even all seven of your neck bones, your cervical bones, we change our elbow angle as we go down in order to just through and open up the other side of the joint based on those facet joints. You cannot turn your head the exact same way and put that same line of drive in by yourself. Again, trust me. I wish I could take care of myself. That would be amazing. So what happens when you turn your head and you hear a popping noise and you hear that cracking noise like, ah, I feel better. You do because you have an endorphin release. You have an endorphin release because the ones above and below as you're doing this are becoming what they call hypermobile, meaning those move more and more. Not because the one that's stuck is getting better, actually when the ones above and below move extra more and more, you're causing the ones in between that are stuck to get more stuck and the ones above and below that become hypermobile to get even worse. So you're actually making the problem worse long term. Now, again, I know when you do it, it feels good at that moment, but I'll remind you eating ice cream feels good at the moment, but we know long term it's not good for us. So think of that popping your neck is like having a bowl of ice cream. Yeah, it feels good now. You're going to pay the price later. And that's what's happening when your neck and your vertebrae. Now when I see the thoracic spine, where your ribs are, the common thing I see here is people will cross their arms across the chest, they'll lean backwards. Somebody will come up from behind them, give them a great big bear hug. Pick them up and bounce them until things go. I'm going to tell you right now, that's the exact opposite, 100 percent opposite of the position that we put you in at a chiropractic clinic to adjust you. We actually lay you face down, drop your shoulders forward and try to open up those facet joints again because remember in the thoracic spine now those joints we talked about the facet joints they're laying almost like your hands up like in the air they're laying flat like that and they glide up and down like this that's why your ribcage can go back and forth. Drop your shoulder right but it doesn't do much else because those ribs are there so you're bouncing them backwards you're jamming those facet joints in the way that makes it mad again it'll feel good at the time but in reality you're causing your ribs to become more grooved into the body. area in the spine where they articulate. You're irritating that joint and you're irritating the facet joints and you're putting stress on the disc. I don't like those people doing that. I think it's horrible because again, it's a hundred percent opposite the position that we put you in when you get a chiropractic adjustment. Not only that, but we never just push straight down. We do a twerk, we go in there and twist it, based on the way your shoulders are sitting and stuff like this. Because when you know, one's open and one's closed, one's forward and one's back, it's a much more complicated action than just bouncing straight back and jamming those joints even more. Lastly, the lower back. This is one that people try all the time. They lay on their side and try to twist their leg, thinking they can do what we do as far as get it to pop. And my hip just popped, man, I feel good. Or they come in, I just feel like you gotta get this one hip to go. I just can't quite get it home. And they wonder why they get horrible disc problems and arthritis in their lower back. It's the exact same thing you were talking again about, you're going in there and you're making the ones above and below move even more, but the one in the middle is more stuck. And the reason why you can't, quote unquote, get it to go anymore, it's because the one that's just gotten so stuck and so jammed up, the ones above and below are moving that much more. And when you come in here, it takes a lot for us to get to go because you've got it so jammed and so wedged and so fixated to one spot. Yeah. It's hard for us to get it too, because you've got it really bad at this point. Trying to pop your own hips, I know it feels good. So does an ice cream sundae. Really bad for you. There's no, nothing else to say about this. Now, the article I read on Yahoo News, the chiropractor went into some great depths about stuff that's just not true about, ripping arteries and tearing muscles. That's not going to happen. Let's be realistic about it. But the real thing that's going to happen is you're going to create more and more issues. Now I've had a patient that used to like to gross his sister out. He liked to pop his own neck all the time. In his teenage years, I x rayed him and because that two bones had gotten so fixated, the disc was dehydrating. Because remember, if it's not moving, then the nutrients doesn't get into the disc space, the disc will dehydrate. And as it dehydrates, it flattens. And the medical term for this is Degenerative Disc Disease, which I've told you before. What a crazy name for a dehydrated disc. Degenerative Disc Disease. So it's a disc that's getting to be dehydrated, it's getting flatter. And as it gets flatter, there's more friction on the bones, and the bones start getting bony calluses. that I like to call osteophytes, which is another term for degenerative arthritis. So here we have a teenager already with bony changes in their neck because he liked to gross his sisters out by popping his own neck. When I went to adjust them, it took a lot of might, a lot of effort, a lot of focus, a lot of determination for me to get the ones that are fixated to move again. And when I did, it didn't feel so good to him because all that scar tissue and all those fibrous adhesions that happened with that disc dehydrating. It was quite an adjustment. Was tough. It took a long time for him to start feeling well again. But those spurs, I read one research paper that says in 50 years they'll go away. So him being a teenager, he has a shot at getting rid of them before he hits Medicare. But like I said, those things, they stick around and they make you have a chronic lower back problem. Transcribed So a lot of times by you trying to pop and snap your own back, in reality you're creating a chronic lower back issue. With a chiropractic adjustment could just help the first time. And the neck too, we see it all the time. People tell me no, I can pop my own neck, it's not a problem. They usually don't want to tell us they're doing it because we tell them they're not, but a lot of times they'll have it slip oh yeah, I just couldn't get that one to go. Oh, I'm so glad you got that one, I couldn't get that one. And that's just telling us that you're doing it to yourself and it's getting harder and harder. And besides, your chiropractor always knows when you're doing this. We can feel the difference. We can feel how loose this one is and how tight that one is. So you're not fooling anybody. Like when you tell your dentist, no, I floss three times a day. You're not fooling nobody. The dentist already, there's a reason the dentist asked you whether or not you're flossing. He already knows you're not. So same thing when you go to the chiropractor, you must not lie about it. We can tell. You must go ahead and just tell us to speed things up. So there you have it. Please don't try to crack your own neck. Please don't try to crack your own thoracic spine where your ribs are. Please don't try to put yourself on your side and try to pop your lower back and hips so bad for you. It causes so many bigger problems worse down the line and it makes the chiropractic work that much harder, too. So I'll say it for your sake and I'll say it for my sake. It makes more work for all of us. So there you have it. Is it okay for me to pop and crack my own neck? No. Just no, don't do it. Knuckles, that's one thing, shoulders, everything else that's different, but please do not do your own spine. You just can't get the right angle. It's impossible. My grandfather even made little blocks based on his x rays and put them on the wall and he would try to throw himself up against the wall thinking he'd get himself. Dad told me he did a lot of yelling and got really mad and put a lot of holes in the wall, but he never got himself. So if my grandfather couldn't figure it out, being a lifetime chiropractor, I don't think you're going to figure it out. All right, thanks for tuning in to Ask the Chiropractor. Remember, if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, only person in the world qualified to answer that question is a chiropractor, not your family healthcare provider, not your dentist, not your podiatrist, not the lady that cuts your hair. Only a chiropractor can answer those questions. So if you have a question, wherever you're listening or watching this, submit it there. Otherwise, go to my website. You'll see links all over the place to me. That have a good day and thanks for tuning in. I appreciate you.