One of the most common things that people feel as they grow older is back and neck pain, which is associated with foraminal stenosis, which is usually found in people who are over 50 year old.
What are the Common Causes of Foraminal Stenosis in Florida?
- Nerve root inflammation
- Nerve root compression
- Osteoarthritis
- Cysts
- Tumors
- Enlarged ligaments around your spine
- Spondylolisthesis
- Dwarfism
- Genetic conditions
- Bone diseases
What Activities Should be Avoided with Foraminal Stenosis?
1. Free weights
If you are a person who has Foraminal Stenosis, then you should avoid pulling weight bars across your shoulders, doing free weights, and squatting with them because it could compress your spine even more.
Instead of using free weights, you would try using a weight machine. This is because this machine was designed to help support your body when you are working out, focusing on specific muscle groups that you have on your body.
When you’re lifting with a weight machine, it is going to help stabilize your back while strengthening your arms and your legs, successfully reducing the other potential issues that may come your way.
2. Stretching in a standing position
When you are doing stretches while you are standing up, there would be unnecessary stress that would be put on your spine because of gravity. Your spinal cord already has this pressure on it when you have foraminal stenosis, so adding more pressure to it would not be the best idea.
You also need to avoid doing extension stretches, the kind of stretches where you have to go backward. This is because it would collapse your spine even more since this kind of stretching is made to increase flexibility.
Instead of doing those stretches, you could try stretching while you are laying down. This would really help make sure that you are safe when you are exercising because it would not be putting any other additional stress on your spine.
You could lie on your back and pull your knee up gently until it reaches your chest, repeat for the other leg, and just hold it for a second. This would help open up your canal and help you even relieve some of the painful symptoms that you are feeling.
3. Running
When you are running, the hard pounding of your feet on the pavement could compress your spine even more, so this would be very irritating to your foraminal stenosis.
This also goes with walking, though it is beneficial, when you are walking on hard pavement for a very long time, it could actually add stress to your back the same way running can.
So instead of running or walking for long periods of time, you could try using an elliptical machine, swimming, and cycling because these activities would be able to help in metabolizing your spine and it is so much easier than running and walking.
Swimming is a very recommended activity because it would help broaden the range of your muscles while allowing you to stretch and exercise, burning a lot of calories. You could also walk in chest-high water because this would not negatively impact your spine.
How to Prevent Foraminal Stenosis
- Keep a good posture
- Avoid sitting for long periods of time
- Exercise regularly
- Stay fit
- Avoid excessive alcohol and all of the other intoxicants
- Keep a balanced diet
- Make sure you eat a lot of calcium and fatty-acid rich food
- Stay hydrated
What Surgeries can be done to treat Foraminal Stenosis?
There are a few non-surgical treatments that you could get when you feel a few symptoms, these treatments would be able to help lessen the symptoms that you are feeling. But you could also always consider surgery.
One of the surgical procedures that you could get is Foraminotomy, which is an invasive open-back surgery. This procedure would be able to help in treating some of the effects of foraminal stenosis that is found in your spine. When surgeons do this, they are going to reposition your tissues and they would cut the bone so that it could lessen the pressure that is being put on your nerve.
Another surgical procedure that could be done if you do not want to get Foraminotomy, you could always get the Deuk Laser Disk Repair. This is a great alternative if you are looking for a less invasive procedure to the invasive spine surgeries like spine fusion and total disk replacement.
The Deuk Laser Disc Repair was developed by a renowned neuro-spine surgeon that is known for being a pioneer in laser, endoscopic back, and neck pain treatment, Dr. Ara Deukmedjian MD.
This procedure is a kind of endoscopic spine surgery that would only require a very small incision. This incision is less than a quarter-inch long, then a tube is going to be slid over the dilator to help position it into the painful disc. They are going to insert an endoscopic camera through the tubular reactor so that the surgeon would be able to guide the laser inside the symptomatic disc.
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