Each vertebrae (bone) in your spine is held in place by nine ligaments. The function of these ligaments is to hold your bones in place while allowing you the flexibility to move around.

When the vertebrae become misaligned from things like trauma, poor ergonomics, repetitive motion or bad posture habits these ligament tend to get damaged and will be begin to swell and lose the ability to perform properly.

Your body is complex and does the best it can to try and stabilize and immobile the injure joint. It does this by signaling your muscles to tighten up, causing them to spasm and cause pain.  If you don’t do anything to resolve this, or worse the symptoms of pain and muscle spasms are covered up, the swelling will eventually go away but your vertebrae and ligaments will still be in an unusual position. Keeping the vertebrae and ligaments in an unusual position will cause your ligaments to become scarred, weakened and abnormal.

Over time this will continue to get worse, especially when repeating traumas, poor ergonomics, posture habits and repetitive motions continue. Eventually, your spine will develop a chronic condition and will start to show signs of spinal arthritis and degenerative disc disease.

If your spine is showing signs of degenerative changes, repeated adjustments from your local chiropractor at regular intervals over a period of time is recommended to help the ligaments heal back to their proper position.

Consider Using a Back Brace

If you have ever had braces on your teeth to correct abnormal alignment you may easily relate to the use of a back brace. The concept of a back brace is similar to that of dental braces. Once the braces are put on and tightened, they start working to move your teeth into the correct alignment.

What happens if you were to immediately remove the braces? Your teeth would move back to where they were before.

However, if you kept your braces on over a period of time until your teeth were in the proper position and then you kept them on until your gums and jaw were completely healed, your teeth would stay properly aligned once you removed the braces.  If, your teeth were out of proper alignment for a prolonged period of time you would have to use a retainer to keep alignment.

This same concept applies to the use of a back brace. If your spine isn’t properly aligned, isn’t allowed the proper amount of time to heal and you don’t practice proper posture, the chances of your spine misaligning again are high.

Contact Advance Health

If you are suffering from back pain and would like to learn more about back braces contact the chiropractors at Advanced Health in Idaho Falls.  At Advanced Health in Idaho Falls we care about helping you take care of yourself so you can live a happy and healthy life.