Are You Suffering From Spine Disorder? Doctor Explains 5 Early Signs To Watch Out For
Experiencing pain in your back, shoulder, and neck can be common among people of all age groups. Commonly this is due to long working hours, a sedentary lifestyle, and nutritional deficiencies. The latest rise in spinal disorders in youth is a cause of concern. These problems are becoming bigger than just issues of fatigue and bad posture especially the problems of abnormal spine curvatures, spondylitis, and slip disks. We spoke to Dr. Arun Bhanot, Consultant Spine Surgery, Manipal Hospitals, Gurugram, to understand more about spine disorders and ways to detect them.
There is an urgent need to tackle these problems at an early stage to prevent life-changing damage to the spine. According to a study published in the Indian Journal of Pain, chronic back pain impacts more than 60% of people in India and the number is only rising since the last decade. If spine problems are not treated timely, they can cause multiple problems in other body parts and organs due to cascading effects. For example, spine patients can develop lung or heart problems arising out of immobility, and even paralysis in some parts of the body. Mental illness, irritability, and other psychological problems can also develop due to chronic back pain in some patients.
Ankylosing spondylitis is one of the common spine disorders affecting the younger population. It is an inflammatory disease that causes bones in the spine to fuse. Apart from that, arthritis, chronic back and spine pain, osteoporosis, scoliosis, kyphosis (rounded upper back), lordosis (spine at the lower back moves inwards), spinal cord cancer, and fractures have also become a concern in recent years. These disorders cause significant pain and can take many years to get better.
Early diagnosis and treatment are key to preventing severe cases of spinal disorders. Therefore, everyone must know about the early signs of these progressive diseases:
Pain caused due to impacts such as a fall or accident gets better over time but chronic pain from spine disorders maintains a consistent pattern that becomes unbearable and doesn't go away without treatment.
The pain restricts movements and hinders a patient from performing activities like running, lifting, carrying a weight, or in some cases moving their neck comfortably.
Some diseases like slip disc can pinch the nerves in the spinal canal and lead to secondary muscle spasms in the back or legs. This can be an important sign to consult a spine specialist and get diagnosed and treated for a spinal disorder if detected.
Spinal canal narrowing (known as spinal stenosis), various spinal tumors, and cancers in the spine can lead to a loss of adequate nutrition/blood supply to an important area, which can cause numbness in some body parts like the extremities.
It is important for people to take back pain seriously and not delay getting tested. Damage to the spinal cord is difficult to cure especially when treatment gets delayed. It can only be prevented by staying vigilant about the early signs and taking active steps to recover from any kind of damage.
Diagnosis these days is becoming a relatively easy process with the use of good x-rays, Spine MRI, or CT scan of the region. After diagnosis, the patient must make the required changes to their lifestyle and follow correct medical advice may it be in the form of taking medicines with physical therapy or undergoing modern minimally invasive surgical treatments, to recover quickly.
