Understanding Chiropractic: Why You Shouldn't Pop Your Own Spine

In this episode of 'Ask the Chiropractor,' Dr. Brant Hulsebus examines the dangers and misconceptions of attempting to 'pop' or crack your own spine. He explains how untrained manipulation, even by healthcare professionals such as athletic trainers or physical therapists, can lead to complications and aggravate existing issues. Dr. Hulsebus highlights the importance of proper chiropractic care, involving detailed x-ray analyses and specialized adjustments, to effectively address spinal misalignments and related pain. He also elaborates on how improper techniques can worsen the conditions by making certain joints hypermobile while others become more fixated. Additionally, he touches on related symptoms such as groin pain and bowel issues that might arise from upper lumbar misalignment.

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Transcript

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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. Today's topic is one that I see a lot on the internet and I get see asked a lot of questions about it, and a lot of people are confused and think that they're doing what we do when they're not, even when it's done by a healthcare professional. And that's when they try to pop their own spine, quote unquote, pop their own spine. I've seen it with personal trainers. I've seen it with even martial arts instructors. I've seen it with a physical therapist and I've even seen it with athletic trainers. They will try to quote unquote, pop the hips and somebody will come in and say my usual person isn't able to pop my hip anymore. What they'll do is they'll lay'em on their side, kinda like we do a side posture adjustment. They'll pull really hard and get a popping noise coming out of the, what we call the SI joints. The SI joints were the tailbone, the sacrum and the ileum. The hip come together and they can twist somebody and make it a pop. There's a endorphin release and people think, oh, that's exactly what my chiropractor does, and I'm here to tell you that is not exactly what your chiropractor does. Not by any means. So they think, because it sounds like what the chiropractor does and it feels a little bit like the chiropractor does, that they've already been taken care of. So they'll come in and tell me, one of the above was putting me in my side. They were popping my hip, but they don't seem to be able to get it anymore. And now I'm having a lot of lower back discomfort and pain. Can you help me out? Let me describe a little bit what happens when you so quote unquote, pop your own neck or pop your own back, or crack your own neck, crack your own back. As chiropractors, we usually start off with taking x-rays and we take your x-rays. We can see which bones most misaligned. We call it subluxated when it's out of alignment, creating pressure on the nerve interfering with the nervous system, and chiropractors are trained to find these misalignments and do a vertebral adjustment to correct these. Okay. Now we also do examinations. Maybe you'll have you turn your head certain ways or bend your feet certain ways, look the way you lie. We use our fingertips a lot just to feel up and down your spine to see what we can feel. And our goal is to find the one that's most fixated. Now when you go to quote unquote crack your own back or pop your own back or have a friend do it, what's happening usually is you're fighting. The ones above and below have become hypermobile, meaning they're making up a difference.'cause when two bones are of alignment, what they'll do is they'll actually lock up and get stuck. And that's what a chiropractor is unique training is. Or they forget the correct line of drive, the correction angles in order to go in to break that fixation. But when you just grab something and just grossly try to manipulate it, make it pop or crack, usually what you're doing is you're moving the ones above and below, making them make a noise, causing the one in between to get more stuck. Now, this is often very obvious in the neck or cervical spine. Somebody will come to me and say, I usually pop my neck every day. It feels good. I do it three or four times a day, but lately it stopped going and now it's getting really tight. I'm having a hard time turning my neck. What's usually happening is they've got two of them now totally locked up, and the ones above and below hypermobile. So not only is this one really stuck with the ones below are moving to double extra, which makes this one really stuck, extremely hard to adjust. So you've really taken a situation that made it bad and actually made it worse. So as a chiropractor, we'll have to seriously get in there and really move you around and be pretty aggressive in order to break that loose. And often patient describes this as being uncomfortable. They don't really care for it, but they've put themselves in this situation where it's made it such a challenge for the chiropractor to do it again when they do it themselves as an endorphin belief. So they said, oh, it feels good, so it must be good for me. I always talk about ice cream sundaes. They always feel good when I eat 'em, but I know they're not good for me. So when you try to pop your own neck or pop your own vertebrae, you're often getting one or two more really stuck and making a really challenge for the chiropractor. Another thing we'll see is we go down the spine, the thoracic spine. A lot of times I'll see a lot of youth do this. They're crossed their arms, crossed their check chest, and have somebody pick them up and bounce them and try to get their rib cage area or a thoracic spine to make popping noises. Now, anytime you go to a chiropractor, you'll find out that we put you in the opposite position to take care of these joints. We lay you down, have your shoulders come down and open up your thoracic spine. This is going backwards and actually jamming the joints, having you jump up and down and jam the joints. Now again, the same thing's happening. One's above and below are moving extra and the one that's fixated is getting more and more stuck, and these will eventually affect the rib cage too.'cause the ribs articulate between two of the vertebras and these vertebraes start to get stuck. That rib starts to get stuck too. Now you're having pain going around the rib cages as well. Again, this is really just bad idea, especially if you do hurt and you have somebody do this because they're really jamming the joint up even more, creating more inflammation and more pain. Again, there'll be a little endorphin relief, so people says it feels good, so I figured it was good for me, but I assure you it's not lower back. Same story. But let's go back to my original talking about making your hip pop. Somebody put you on your side, they make your hip pop. Your hip doesn't randomly just get stuck. Your hip doesn't randomly just have a problem. There's a thing called the writing reflex, and the writing reflex says that no matter what, your eyes stay level at the horizon. Otherwise you lose your equilibrium. You lose your balance. You have blurred vision and you'll have slurred speech. Your body has to keep those eyes level at all times. So if you get a kink in your lower back, usually your hips counter twist to keep you balanced. Now, I've had a couple athletes over the years that they said they usually pop my hips, but they're busy today. Can take a look at me and I don't even usually have to touch your, touch their hips. I always find their upper lumbars out. You see the L one L two have a muscle on the front side that travels down and splits and goes into both of your groin, into your femurs, your leg bones. And what happens a lot of the times is your L one L two will turn left or right, and this will take that muscle and make it really tight. You might have some groin pain on the front side, and when it does is it lifts and twists and turns your hips to balance you back out again to keep your eyes level with the writing reflex. Now, this right here could cause the piriformis muscle, the muscle you sit down to get really tight, angry, and when that muscle gets really tight, it'll hit the sciatic nerve and it mimics sciatica. It's actually called piriformis syndrome, but a lot of people mistaken it as sciatica. I've done several podcasts on this topic in the past, either piriformis syndrome or sciatica. You can go and see the difference of them, but the more you crank on that hip and try to make it pop, and that lumbar spine's still there. The angrier, you're getting that muscle on the front side, and that's when people really tell me, not only does the person pop their hip, but now they're getting some gro pain on the front side. I already know what's going on is that L one, L two is getting more and more locked up, more and more twisted, creating more and more pressure on that hip flexor muscle, which continues to pull the hip out more and more, and the person gets addicted to having somebody pop it all the time and they think they're correcting it because they'll get brief relief, but they're really causing that upper lumbar to lock up. Now, the nerves that come outta the upper lumbar, they innervate your groin, the front of your femur, your front of your legs, not the backside, not the S attic area, but that side. So the oxygen creates some discomfort in that area as well, neurologically. Lastly, those nerves also go to your colon. So a lot of people could complain about bowel issues when this is going on too. So it's very important that you look at the whole spine altogether at once. It's also very important you have somebody very trained who knows the right thing reflects and the compensations. And the most common, if this one's out, you probably have one out here. If you have this one out, you probably have one here. It chiropractors. We see trends in this, especially once we know your profession, if we're working with your profession, this is really important. Athletes, and I'm picking at athletes today because athletes are the most common ones that do this. You don't see a lot of. Postal carriers laying on the side of the sidewalk and having someone try to pop their hip. But you will go into a trainer's room or a locker room, and you will see people trying to do this to each other or somebody else doing it who's probably not trained on doing it. But again, they get that pop and they think they got it. So it's very important if this is something you do. If you know someone does this, it's time to get your spine analyzed by a chiropractor. Now what does that look like? As I alluded to before, you would come into the chiropractor clinic, the chiropractor would most likely take full spine x-rays of you to see your entire spine.'cause you're obviously having massive compensation areas. Be able to figure out which ones are the most rotated, the most subluxated. To know that probably focus my chiropractic exam on these. From there, you would go through some type of chiropractic examination. Whether it's just bending your legs to see what your hips are doing or having you lift your legs, maybe turn your head left or right and do different things with your arms and your hands, but it gives us clues what's going on in your spine based on the way the rest of your body behaves. And it contributes because it all goes back and connects there. So if you have a short leg and I bend, it gets longer. I know that hip is out, but why is that hip out? I'll feel the muscles from your hip joints. Then your SI joints going up your spine. Usually find the lumbar out. Compare that to the x-ray. Sure enough, the x-ray shows this misalign too. I'll do a couple other tests in that lumbar, whether I feel it and move it around a little bit and we'll find out. It is fixated and I usually will adjust that and then I'll watch the hips. A lot of times it's self-correct. Then they have to even touch 'em, but yet that's the one that they keep getting. Popped all the time creating bigger issues. So if you have somebody that's just popping one joint at the other joint, or if you're a physical therapist or athletic trainer or strength conditioning coach, and you're watching and listening to this and you find this happening, an athlete over and over again, you owe it to the athlete to get them to see a chiropractor that will analyze the spine and really get to the bottom of what's going on. Now you might say those people allowed to do these things. They'll do a stretch and during that stretch, if they stretch a little bit harder, they know it'll pop. So even though a lot of strength conditioning coaches and athletic trainers might not have certification in doing this kind of things, they can still do it indirectly wink, while doing something else. And some per physical therapists, excuse me, are allowed to do these things. They are due to training courses. But I have very limited knowledge of what they're actually learning. Maybe they are learning about the compensation areas. Maybe they're not. I can just tell you my clinical experience. Typically, they are not, they're just making one joint mobilize and ignoring the other joints that could be contributing to it. Again, it's just my clinical experience. I'm not trying to belittle or be. What the physical therapists are doing. But I worked with a lot of athletes and I've seen a lot of things over my time, and I usually find out they're just making one little popin noise at one spot as 20. I've been practicing chiropractic for 23 years. I've never seen a person with one spot again. Why is that? That writing and reflex, it's always a yin and a yang trying to balance you out, only taking care of one and not the other unless you definitely have the primary. The other one might eventually self-correct. I'm not a gambler. I don't wait for maybe mites. I just go ahead and take care of it. So there you have it. What do chiropractors. I don't like it when other people try to pop their own spine. It's not because we feel like you're doing what we're doing. We know you're not doing what we're doing. We know you're not getting the care we're doing. So we wanna make sure that we get a chance to look at you and get both spots. Also, a lot of times people tell me they don't wanna try a chiropractic because they've already had somebody pop your spine and then give relief. So if you've been to an athletic trainer, physical therapist, strength conditioning coach, massage therapist, that's popping your spine, don't rule out chiropractor. You haven't been to a chiropractor. You haven't tried chiropractic yet. You just have somebody doing what they think is what chiropractors do. It doesn't mean they're doing what chiropractors do, so don't give up on chiropractic unless you've actually seen a chiropractor or like this podcast. Don't. If you want to know more about chiropractic or chiropractic care, the only person that's you can qualify to answer what a chiropractor does, or what a chiropractor doesn't do is a chiropractor. So make sure you always follow up with a licensed chiropractor. If you have a question for me that maybe you'd like me to answer next week, go and leave a comment below and wherever you're seeing watching us into this, please and subscribe and share. And we'll be back next week with another question. And if you have a question, maybe your question will be the question of the week. Thanks