The narrowing of the spaces in the spine is known as Spinal Stenosis. The narrowing in your spine can put pressure on the vertebrae, spinal cord, spinal nerves, and nerve roots traveling through your spinal canal, which is what leads to pain and other symptoms. This condition mostly occurs in the lumbar spine and cervical spine, but the thoracic spine can also be affected.
Wear and tear in the spine over time can cause spinal stenosis, which is related to osteoarthritis. Oftentimes, anterior osteophytes, which are tiny bone formations, can appear on the spine and grow into the spinal canal, reducing the space available for other spine structures.
For some people, symptoms of spinal stenosis are not visible, whereas, for others, there is pain, numbness, tingling, and muscle weakness. Over time, these symptoms can worsen.
Additionally, loss of space, and more specifically height loss in the spine can be an effect of disc height loss due to conditions such as degenerative disc disease (DDD), herniated discs, spilled discs, or bulging discs. Disc degeneration in particular can lessen the space in the spine, as discs tend to lose a portion of their water content, reducing in height, altering the alignemnt of the spine.
Types of Disc Space Narrowing
It is possible to suffer from more than one kind of spinal stenosis in your back. The two types of this condition are divided according to the location in the spine where the disease occurs. The two kinds of spinal stenosis are:
1) Cervical Spinal Stenosis
In this type, the space narrowing occurs in the cervical part of the spine. This corresponds to the neck and part of the upper back.
2) Thoracic Spinal Stenosis
Thoracic spinal stenosis causes loss of intervertebral disc space in the mid portion of the back, also known as the thoracic spine or mid back.
3) Lumbar Spinal Stenosis
This is the most common type of spinal stenosis and it occurs when the space narrowing takes place in the lower section of your spine, which is the lower back.
Lumbar disc degeneration in particular can lead to problems for the sufferer, as a damaged disc in the lumbar spine can increase the possibility of sciatica, which can turn into chronic low back pain.
Symptoms
Most often, symptoms of space narrowing, or spinal stenosis, are not evident. When the condition occurs, it tends to get worse over time. Symptoms of spinal stenosis depend on the location of its onset within the spine and which nerves, or nerve roots are affected, but most often symptoms include pain, tingling sensations, weakness, balance issues, as well as bowel and/or bladder function problems.
The symptoms may affect the neck, back, shoulders, arms, hands, hips, legs, or even feet.
Causes
Some of the most common causes of a narrowing spinal canal include:
- Herniated Discs
- Degenerative Disc Disease
- Thickened ligaments
- Bone overgrowth/ osteophytes
Treatment
Spinal stenosis makes people less active because of the pain. Inactivity can lead to muscle weakness, which can ultimately increase pain. Becoming less active as one ages constitutes one of the risk factors for the narrowing of intervertebral disc space.
That being said, this issue should be addressed as soon as possible, and patients should seek medical advice before attempting any form of treatment at home.
The first step in getting the right treatment for this condition is to obtain a diagnosis to confirm that the set of symptoms the patient suffers from can be attributed to spinal stenosis.
The diagnosis process usually starts with a spinal specialist examining the affected area for any abnormalities and asking for the patient’s medical history. If the results of this examination are not conclusive, the patient may then be sent to have additional tests, most likely an imaging test, such as a CT scan to either confirm the diagnosis and/or rule out any other more dangerous condition that may lead to a similar set of symptoms.
Once the diagnosis is confirmed, the patient can proceed to the treatment phase. There are several treatment methods available to treat disc space narrowing, some more invasive than others. A good rule of thumb is to always start with the least invasive option first, and then work one’s way up from there.
That being said, these are some of the treatment options available for this condition:
Surgical treatments. These should only be reserved for the most severe of cases and only when the patient failed to respond to less invasive forms of treatments. Because of the risks associated with any type of surgical intervention, as well as the side effects that arise post-operation, this should never be the first, or among the first options to consider for the treatment of disc space narrowing.
For milder forms of disc space narrowing, they can often be treated at home.
- Physical therapy. This is one of the best methods to treat narrowing in between disc spaces as it is a rather natural and non-invasive method.
- Anti-inflammatory medication. Over-the-counter anti-inflammatory medication can be temporarily used to alleviate the pain that comes with this condition. However, it is not a form of treatment per se, and are not recommended for long-term use.
- An alternative option: Based on our 40 years of clinical experience, we came up with a unique back care device called “Backrack”, which stretches out your spine, adding back the lost intervertebral disc space, allowing the spinal structures that were affected to bounce back, heal, and gradually reduce symptoms.
Backrack is a CE marked product designed to treat most back pains through easy bodyweight exercises that can be performed at home without the need for supervision. This allows you to take full control of your treatment.
