Tag Archives: vertebrae+

The Importance of X-Rays

Hi, Dr. Steve Battaglino. Today I want to show you some X-rays, to show you the importance of x-ray. What kind of information we get from them that we can’t otherwise just glean from our hands.

This first x-ray series, this is “before and after,” so this is the side view of the neck like this and this is where the jaw is, the base of the skull. On the before x-ray, you can see its very straight, and then on the after x-ray, you can actually see a real nice gradual curvature. What it does is that curvature opens up these vertebrae and disks in the back where we can see they’re just about touching here on the before. A big change for the disks and nerve flow come in through there, but also in terms of arthritis as we age its crucial to get a proper curvature in there as much as possible. This is a “before and after” series of scoliosis patient, young man, 11 years old. You see curvature like this, real pronounced scoliosis. In fact, this patient was just waiting for surgery to have metal rods inserted up and down the spine on either side.

We were able to have him avoid that surgery, thank God. And we can see after four months of care, a very straight spine, much taller and much healthier in terms of energy level, digestion, and things like that. This is a neck curve, it’s actually a reversed neck curve. The neck curve… This is the jaw and base of the skull once again. The neck curve is supposed to go like this and this way. This neck curve is reversed and it causes a lot of stress and strain on the bones and the disks and joints and nerves of the neck. You can see actually some bone spurring forming here as the body tries to cope with that stress. This is a similar patient just fast forward probably 20 years where we can see the strain over time has caused this bird beak formation, this bone spurring. The body is trying to fuse these bones together to help with that strain of the neck being forward like that. We can see the disk, which is supposed to be nice and dark like this, is getting to be sort of obliterated there as well.

It’s important to catch these kind of problems in the alignment of the spine early on. This is another scoliosis patient where we can see real pronounced curvatures. It’s real important to catch this early on as well. You would think that this patient for example would be real distorted walking around, but they are not. Its amazing, but the body finds a way to compensate that makes them look almost straight. X-ray is crucial to be able to see really what’s was going on in the main points. This is the lower back from the side view. So this is the buttock here, this is the tummy here, the patient is looking this way. The main thing on this is a feature called spondylolisthesis. This your twenty dollar word of the day. It basically means this slippage here, these bones are supposed to pretty much line up with this. This is the sacrum or the base of the spine. This slippage here has a huge effect on low back, stability of the low back, its really important and know that its there to best treat it. Again, this is an x-ray diagnosis. We don’t really know about this by just feeling it.

We have curvatures in the neck, this is the left shoulder and the right. We see curvatures there that really can be best treated if we can figure out specifically where it’s locked up and why its doing what its doing. This is a type of scoliosis that we can’t really fix per se. It’s more of a support to kind of patch it and keep it functioning the best that I can, but basically this vertebrae is wedge-shaped instead of nice and cube-shaped like it’s normally its supposed to be. So it predisposes the spine to have that curvature to it. The body needs that curvature to compensate. We can see if things like this side slippage here, its kind of slipped this way. This is due to an injury probably before the age of 10. This man is probably in his late sixties now. To be able to see what’s causing a problem and to fix it and the best way and the most affordable way, the quickest way, x-ray is the way to go. That’s your little x-ray lesson your window in to the world of a chiropractic geek who marks x-rays until nine or 10 at night, till my wife calls me tells me to come home.

This is Dr. Steve and and this is been your x-ray minute.

What Is Causing My Pain?

Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. People ask me all the time “What’s causing my pain? Is it nerve pain? Is it some other kind of pain? Ultimately, all pain is nerve pain. All sensation is coming from nerves as well. In the spine, the nerves for our whole entire body, originate here in the spine. They come out on either side and each of these little nerves branches over 10,000 times and go to form a whole nerve network in our body.

If there’s compression on these nerves… Let me show you how that can happen. This is a model of the vertebrae, the bone, and there’s a disk in between. We can see this hole here where the nerves are coming out. If the disk… Let me back up a step, if the bone get’s out of place, it can put pressure on not only on the joints that move here, but on the disk. And the disk is a big factor in what puts pressure on these big nerves because it will bulge to one side or the other, and typically, towards the back.

If it does bulge or put pressure on these nerves, and it doesn’t take much, we used to talk about like pliers, pinching the nerve. In reality, they’re very, very delicate structures. And just inflammation around the joint or around that area in general can put pressure on these nerves, can cause not only pain but other problems, digestive problems and a host of other issues because they’re going to run our whole entire body. So, the cause of the pain is coming from some sort of compression or distortion on a nerve somewhere.

If we can remove that pressure, not only will your pain go away or other symptoms, but it will allow that nerve to do what it’s supposed to do which is feed some function in your body, ie, it’s going to be a pathway for your brain to communicate with some portion of the body and get that communication back. That back and forth communication is crucial for our body to run properly.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with your Health Minute.