Your Poor Health Is Because You're Getting Old, Huh?

Are your hips aching? Your neck sore?

"Oh, that? I'm just getting old."

Many of us think it from time to time, and some of us even tell our doctors that we assume our health problems are from "getting old". Quite often, your doctor just nods in agreement - either because they believe that "getting old" really is your problem, or because they think it will be too labor-intensive to educate you on what is and isn't inevitable when it comes to your age going up.

Let's just talk about your skeleton. It may seem like a small thing to consider when looking at healthy aging, but it's actually a great indirect measurement of how healthy your aging is going. Since arthritis is one of the most common and most debilitating aspects of "getting old", looking at your bone health - specifically your spinal column - is a great window to your general health.

Whenever a doctor looks at an x-ray of a spine and says they see "degeneration", what they are really talking about is osteoarthritis, also known simply as arthritis. When you see the prefix osteo- you are dealing with bones. The prefix -arthr relates to the joints. Lastly, when you see the suffix -itis you are dealing with some sort of inflammation. Put it all together and you have inflammation of bones, specifically at joint surfaces. Most of the time people feel achy because they are "getting old" it is soreness and pain from arthritis.

Arthritis in the spine occurs in certain places more readily than others. If we are going to understand how to prevent the advance of arthritis, we need to look at what it is that makes arthritis happen at a fundamental level. After a short discussion you will have a very clear and helpful understanding of arthritis in the spine, or anywhere else in the body, and what causes it.

Bones are primarily composed of calcium phosphate, and are constantly regenerating themselves via a process called turnover (if you want to learn more about this just do and internet search for terms like "osteolysis", "osteoclast", and "osteoblast"). The body is constantly replacing all your bone's cells, and with each replacement there can be changes to the amount of calcium in your bones. Same thing goes for all the rest of the cells in your body, like your liver cells or skin cells. Not only does your body determine the amount of calcium to put in your bones, the body also determines which specific parts of your bones are under more stress and then puts extra calcium there for added bone strength at the more challenged areas.

Normally, your bones shouldn't be under that much load and physical stress. Your muscles and your joints normally work with your body to dissipate the burden of gravity and work. Importantly, the way your spine is shaped actually works to allow the spine to bear a relatively heavy physical load without over-stressing the bones themselves. This is accomplished mainly by the curves built into the spine. When viewed from the front or back the spine shouldn't have any visible curves, otherwise you have scoliosis. When viewed from the side there should be curves. These curves add springiness to the spine that a straight spine (or an overly-curvy spine) wouldn't be able to have.

So, now we know how the body reduces stress on the spinal bones, and this allows us to understand what kinds of things increase stress on your bones and speeds up the aging process of our spinal bones.

Loss of Normal Spinal Curvature - when the neck, mid-back, or low back curves are increased or decreased beyond normal range, this causes added weight to be transferred onto your bones. In the case of exaggerated curves, this causes increased strain on the inner part of the curve and causes arthritis to increase on the inside of the curve. Calcium will be deposited at those areas and your discs will degenerate due to the pressure on them. This will also cause degenerative arthritis to occur in transitional areas of the spine, such as where the neck becomes the midback, where the midback becomes the low back, and where the low back meets the tailbone.

Disruption of Alignment Between Adjacent Spinal Bones - when two bones become misaligned in relation to each other this means that the force that normally passes evenly through them is no longer spread evenly, and instead the burden causes increased calcium to be deposited in an asymmetrical fashion. This increased stress leads to thickened and irregular bones and eventually bone spurs and other signs of degeneration. Wear and tear on spinal discs and other spinal joints will be more likely.

Your spinal column is the core stabilizing framework that your body relies on. When the spine is not aligned properly this causes degenerative arthritis to set in. Spinal degeneration causes pressure on the nerves that control your entire body due to the loss of disc height, bulging discs, and bone spurs. In order to have vitality and enduring health you need to have a nervous system that is not subject to the stresses of spinal degeneration. Spinal integrity allows for nervous system integrity.

The nervous system is responsible for controlling the processes involved in bone turnover and regeneration, as well as for controlling nearly every other process in the body. When you take care of your spine you slow down or stop the degeneration of your skeletal system and preserve the useful life of your spine. The longer you can go through life with a healthy spine with healthy discs and normal curves, the longer you will go through life with decreased pressure and interference to your spinal nerve roots and nervous system.

Jack Lalanne swam a mile in chilly water, pulling 13 rowboats with 70 passengers, with his hands and feet shackled... at age 70.

Many of us live lifestyles that cause our bodies to break down and degenerate prematurely. To put this into perspective, we don't go through the lifespan of a car without making sure the wheels are aligned because we know that our tires will wear out unevenly and our car will not drive well if it's out of alignment. We get our oil changed regularly to slow down engine wear and tear. Apply those same principles to your body because when it comes to your body the manufacturer didn't give you an owner's manual and provided no warranty, so you better take care of it and make sure your original parts last as long as they can. When a lot of people feel pain these days they take medicine to make the pain go away without really considering what's going on in the body to make it hurt like it is. That's comparable to pulling out a fuse in the car to turn the "check engine" light off rather than stopping by a repair shop and figuring out what is wrong and how to fix it.

If only we all treated our bodies as well as our cars! Pay attention to things that cause premature wear-and-tear and then avoid those things. It is as simple as that. The basics of health are always simple. Being more mindful of spinal health, everything from biomechanically-sound posture to getting chiropractic check-ups, will let you avoid some of the more common mistakes people make that cause their spines, and bodies, to "get old" too fast.