Many thanks to everyone for the encouragement as I wrangle this back bit again. Unfortunately the MRI report was not good. L5 has gotten quite a bit worse – herniated in the front and the back has increased as well. L1 showed slight improvement and the rest all got slightly worse (6 in total). I’m still not a surgical candidate (which is the good news as far as I’m concerned – largely because there’s not just one that they can go in and fix to give relief. Neno (my chiro) said laughingly “where would we start?”. I’m terrified of spinal surgery so am kind of glad….for now. The down side is that I don’t have much disc material left so am close to being bone on bone. He says there’s a fusion in my future. WORSE or at least more alarming to me is the vertebrae/bones are starting to degenerate and the have fractures (he had a fancy name for the stress cracks) in them.
Soooo…. Scott/Liz - I did get an inversion table this weekend! The crazy thing is that when I saw the display at the store I realized that I met the guy who makes this particular table (Teeter hang up) at a party at his daughter’s home this summer! Lovely man – he and I had a loooong talk about his product, he gave me his card, and I promptly forgot the company name and lost the card. Went to the local Fitness store and BAM there was his photo on the only model they had. Started on it last night and (perhaps it’s psychosomatic) but feel some relief already.
The open question to Scott and folks who have experience with this is what do I do about the degeneration/cracks? How do I stop/reverse the degeneration? That’s terrifying. One of the big reasons I strength train is to (well strengthen my back/core/hamstrings – thus the back extension profile picture) but isn’t strength training also supposed to help bone density? I eat a largely animal protein and vegetable based diet, don’t drink – does too much protein really sap bone calcium/density to the degree that you would see a difference in a year? (just a little over a year ago was my last MRI). I take calcium but semi-irregularly so clearly that’s one thing to step up. I eat nearly NO dairy – but that’s only been over the last 4 months since I’ve been mostly Paleo. Would adding that help? What else can I do?
Soooo…. Scott/Liz - I did get an inversion table this weekend! The crazy thing is that when I saw the display at the store I realized that I met the guy who makes this particular table (Teeter hang up) at a party at his daughter’s home this summer! Lovely man – he and I had a loooong talk about his product, he gave me his card, and I promptly forgot the company name and lost the card. Went to the local Fitness store and BAM there was his photo on the only model they had. Started on it last night and (perhaps it’s psychosomatic) but feel some relief already.
The open question to Scott and folks who have experience with this is what do I do about the degeneration/cracks? How do I stop/reverse the degeneration? That’s terrifying. One of the big reasons I strength train is to (well strengthen my back/core/hamstrings – thus the back extension profile picture) but isn’t strength training also supposed to help bone density? I eat a largely animal protein and vegetable based diet, don’t drink – does too much protein really sap bone calcium/density to the degree that you would see a difference in a year? (just a little over a year ago was my last MRI). I take calcium but semi-irregularly so clearly that’s one thing to step up. I eat nearly NO dairy – but that’s only been over the last 4 months since I’ve been mostly Paleo. Would adding that help? What else can I do?
