Mine was identified by a friend who was in nursing school and wanted to practice her massage skills on me. I was around 20, working at the Amsterdam Tourist Office at the time. “Weet je dat je scheef bent?” she asked. “Whatever,” I thought.
A chiropractor diagnosed it in my middle sister and our uncle Harrie had it too. I don’t know who else had it, but there must have been others. I don’t know whether my youngest sister has it. Probably.
I’d never looked into it before, but did so last night.
Genetic = inherited, hereditary
Congenital = present at birth
This is what it looks like.
That looks about right. My spine simply doesn’t make sense at some point in my lower back. I’d say that “incarcerated” or “fully segmented” is the type that I have. The type “fully segmented” seems to be more pronounced; this is why I think that my type may be “incarcerated”, otherwise I would suspect “fully segmented”.
It reminds me of defects in crystal lattices… Dislocations etc.
Normally, when you go down my spine, after the deformity, the spine is a little bit to the left relative to the part above. Right now, however, the deformity sticks out and the lower part of the spine is now also more deeply into the body relative to the part above it. (It can feel like I am lying on something.)
I have two more discs that are a bit iffy. I think I damaged one when I fell off my bicycle when I was in my late 30s or early 40s. That was a bad fall. I fell flat on my back, but really hard and I was surprised that I was actually still able to get up because it felt really bad. Scary.
Effects
Adjacent discs can become strained. When my sister was diagnosed, she was still very young but already had a worn disc. This may have been related to the deformity in her spine.
I only always carry bags on my left shoulder. I can’t carry anything on my right shoulder.
When a disc or deformity gets out of whack, your back muscles start working like crazy, start aching and then you start to respond to that, to try to avoid the muscle pain and this usually makes things worse. A large area can seize up as a result. This is why using ibuprofen gel and/or tablets is important. It speeds up recovery.
This deformity affects my nerves, too. When I was in my 40s, and earlier as well, I often had sciatica down my left leg and it could be quite debilitating. Or should I call it “annoying”? Sometimes, I could feel a connection to bowel movements, but that was rare. These days, I can almost always feel things pull in my left leg (and I tend to have cramps in that leg too).
Most recently, I have had trouble walking. My leg muscles are strong enough, but their steering is sometimes a little impaired. I think that this can make you think you’re exhausted and I do think that it is related to physical exhaustion. I certainly am totally completely exhausted, so maybe it is just that. (A few days after I typed this, the pain also shifted into my right hip and lifting my right leg – crossing it over the left – became impaired. I had to use my hands to lift my leg – which I do a lot anyway – and after that, the pain in my spine got a lot worse.) I notice that I seem to have trouble lifting my legs at times, but no trouble moving them forward. This seems to happen after too much physical exertion (walking, carrying heavy things, pulling heavy things).
Most recently, both legs have also often been hurting badly when I was lying down. I am not 100% convinced that this is related to the spine, but it probably is. It disappears when I get up again. I don’t have a good explanation for it. It could be related to pressure being off the spine and some kind of circulation suddenly being much better? It may be related to ambient temperature, too. Not sure.
Did you know that balance disturbances can also result from lower spine deformities? You might think it’s your ears that are to blame, but your head needs to make sense of what is happening too and it sometimes have a little trouble doing that if your spine isn’t straight. Basically, one of your feet is a little higher than the other, right? In my case, it seems that my left shoulder is higher and my left foot probably is too, then.
It’s also happened twice that I was standing in my kitchen, stepped to the side and felt my spine shift, that is, the top part moved relative to the lower part, or actually likely the other way. It felt dramatic, but nothing happened; I froze instantly. It’s a natural reflex. I don’t know if that was related to this spinal deformity. It could have to do with that fall.
Solutions
Besides using ibuprofen, for me, it seems to help if I make sure that I swing my hips to the right when I am walking. My age plays a role. Possibly, that swing creates a little bit of extra space so that this “baby disc” fits better and slides back.
This deformity sits right under my belt. On some chairs and in some situations, that’s not helpful. Loosening it or taking it off can be better.
Exercise! Keep your muscles in top shape. This is sooooo important!
Watch your posture. Walk tall.
When you lift something heavy, be sure to let your leg muscles do most of the work.
Sitting or walking too long probably puts too much pressure on my ageing spine these days and it’s probably good to lie down for a few minutes a few times during the day. (This might also be why my legs can really hurt sometimes when I am lying down?)
By manipulating the joints in my spine, I sometimes succeed in popping discs back again, not always fully, but even a little bit can help. (Thank you, chiropractor Doug Willen in NY! His videos with animals have been very useful for me. I simply aped stuff that he does. I was not only suddenly able to touch the floor again with my hands, which I hadn’t been able to do in decades, I also turned out to have a rib that was out of alignment as a result of a bad fall during which my right rib cage slammed into a door jamb. I was able to manipulate the rib back out without even intending to. “Pop!” It took me a few days to figure out what had happened. Something had been nagging there and I wondered if I was growing a tumor in the lining of my chest. Doug Willen – great guy – also works with humans and started out as a massage therapist. Another great source of information is Brian Abelson’s physical therapy practice in Canada. Since 2012, their videos about nerve flossing have been helping me with nerves stuck in my shoulders. I had two fully frozen shoulders at Easter that year; my left arm was painful and useless, including the hand. I was slowly able to unfreeze them on my own, but it took a lot of patience.)
Tai-chi-like movements. Also, there is an exercise that involves bending forward while raising the head and bending backward while lowering the head.
Pay attention to your neck, too. I find that simply rotating my head one way and then the other way can help a lot.
There were PE exercises that I couldn’t do as a child and teenager. My back would simply get stuck or something. (I also had a curvature that was psychological, a tilted pelvis. That served as a physical memory of something stupid that happened in my childhood but that I’d largely forgotten about. When the memory popped up when I was 49, that curvature disappeared. Physicians used to stand and look at my body, but couldn’t figure out what was wrong, if anything and they also never identified the deformity as far as I know. It’s minor.)
Anything involving the neuromusculoskeletal system usually means that nerves get irritated. That leads to inflammation, with swelling. There often is not much space in joints or openings where nerves run through and this is why it can be important to help keep inflammation down. That’s where things like ibuprofen come in handy again.
I know that there is a connection between blood sugar and the composition of synovial fluid (which lubricates your joints) because I’ve read some research on that in the past. So it may be helpful to limit added-sugar intake, but this is just a wild guess. The spine also contains synovial fluid. I seem to remember that high blood sugar is not good for nerves.
