Back and Neck Cracks: Are They Helping or Hurting You?

Discover the truth about those spine-popping sounds! In our latest episode of "Ask the Chiropractor," I delve into whether those neck and back cracks are harmless or harmful. Listen to uncover how your body reacts and the role chiropractic care plays in spine health. It's a must-listen for anyone concerned about their spinal wellbeing. #healthy815 #palmerproud #icachiropractic

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here, and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask the Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford Icehogs. Let's dive into it. Hi, so this is a question we get asked all the time. Hey, when I'm moving my neck around or I just twist my lower back, I'm hearing pops and snaps and cracks. Am I like destroying my back? Am I self adjusting myself? Am I making myself better or worse? What's really happening when I move myself and I hear noises in my spine? Let me answer this the best way I know how to answer this. Basically, when you're doing those things and you're hearing those noises, First of all, let me back a step up. If you're grabbing a hold of a chair and twisting yourself and making yourself make noises, Yes. You're hurting yourself. Yes, you're making yourself worse. If you're grabbing your chin and turning your head to make it pop, you're making yourself worse. When someone comes in here and said, hey, I haven't seen you like in two months. I've been able to get it myself, but now I think I got one that I can't get. I really need your help. Yeah, you really need my help because you've gotten that one so messed up by trying to do it yourself, right? That you need a lot of care now. Trying to avoid coming in, you need a lot of care. Why does this happen when you do it yourself? But what happens is when you're subluxated, again, that's when one or two bones are misaligned, creating stress and affecting the nerves and where they go and how they respond. They lock up. When your body has a stress to these two vertebraes, they're going to lock up and they're going to freeze. What your body's doing is saving those vertebraes from more injury, allowing you to mess them up worse. So if you do something chemically, physically, or emotionally, to induce stress into your system, you can make two vertebrae lock up and create what we call a subluxation. The chiropractor's job is to feel up and down your spine by using tools like examinations and x rays to find these two that are misaligned and make them move again. So when you get a chiropractic adjustment, if you looked at an x ray before and immediately after you would be gravely disappointed. You'd be so upset because the x ray won't look any different. It feels like it'll look different, but it really won't. All we're doing is freeing it up so that way in time it can learn how to behave better and not get so fixated. A lot of times if you've had a problem in your spine, a subluxation in your spine for a long time, the bones start to change their shape. It's called Wolf's Law. Wolf like the animal. And what happens is the bone will change its shape to deal with the stress you've put on it. And it's almost impossible to bring it back. But we can maintain you, keep you strong, keep it from getting worse, and keep the arthritis away. So I'm not trying to say it's doom and gloom. I'm just saying it's hard to bring it back. And what happens is when these two lock up and they stop moving and you grab a chair and you try to force yourself to turn, what you're doing is you're making the ones above and below move even more because you can't get the right angle, the right correction. Trust me. I wish I could adjust my own neck. You know how many times on a Sunday afternoon I have a little bit of a headache and I said, man, I wish I could do this to myself. I know exactly what to do and everything. But I have to wait until I see Dr. Hayes or Dr. Dayes or Dr. Sam on Monday to get my help. Unless I'm at my dad's house, right? That's one nice thing about having so many chiropractors in the family. But nevertheless, man, I wish I could take care of myself. My grandfather wished he could do it, right? He's probably sitting in the Byron Rockford area, 1949, no other chiropractors for him to see. He tried all kinds of things, like throwing himself up against the wall, the little blocks on the wall. So if I can't figure out how to do it to myself, trust me, you can't either. So when you do it to yourself, And you get those noises. What happens is the ones that are locked are getting more locked. The ones above and below are getting more hypermobile. They're moving more and more. And you're forcing them past the point to where they make an audible noise. And the noise creates an endorphin release and the endorphin release feels better. And so you think, I got it. I feel better. I remind you all the time, eating ice cream would make you feel better, it doesn't make you better. Okay? So when you do this, you cause the ones above and below to move even more, and the ones in the middle get more and more locked up. And then when you've been doing this for three months, and you come to see me, and you're like, I can't get this one, can you get it? And I look at him, I try to get it, try to get it Oh, you just can't get it. You're so close. I'm like, no, you've got this so locked up, so jammed up. It's going to take four or five visits to get over this because of how bad you've got this locked. And not only that, but now the hypermobile ones above and below, they're creating more stress, more resistance on the one that's stuck. So not only did you get the ones more stuck, but by making the ones above and below more loose, you've made the chiropractor's job so much more challenging. So this is a bad thing to do. Same in the neck. Same story. And we get it all the time. Somebody, I can tell you the people who come in, they tell me they don't do it. But we know they do it. Like your dentist knows if you floss or not. We know darn if you're trying to do this to yourself. We can just feel the difference in your spine. But let's talk about now what the question was. When I move my head and neck around like that, I hear a crack or a pop. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? The answer is yes. This is a good thing and a bad thing. It's a good thing and a bad thing because typically what's happening, I'll talk about the neck first. Maybe you've got one in between your shoulders that's misaligned that you don't really feel. The shoulders from your muscles, excuse me, from your shoulders come up into your neck. And as they come up to your neck they attach to different vertebraes. So part of this equation is locked and fixated it starts to mimic a fixation somewhere else. And those bones try to get stuck. So let's say my T4 is misaligned between my shoulder blades. Now my shoulder blades aren't moving the way they're supposed to. But the muscles from T4, T5 up, come up and attach to C2, the second bone in your neck. Now that C2 is getting a little stuck because that one muscle doesn't want to move a certain way. Then you move that way on your own. And then it frees up. That's good because you're able to free it up, but it's bad because something else is pulling on it, leaving you the opportunity to turn and free it up on your own. So moving it yourself like that, will that cause more problems? To the bone making the noise? Most likely no. Most likely you're not causing any damage. Your body's trying to self correct, and that's good that you're able to self correct. But what's bad is that you have to. What's bad is that the lower one is pulling on that, creating this problem. The longer you wait to correct this, the more likely the other one that's moving on its own now might not keep moving that way, might get fixated, might create another problem, and now give your chiropractor two areas they have to focus on in order to free you up. So if you start to experience this at a higher rate Go see your chiropractor. Now another reason this could happen is because the lower back, same story. Maybe your hip's stuck and your lower back's not. And so you're moving around, your lower back's making noises because your hip's stuck and it's pulling on it. It's the same idea, same concept as somewhere else. But let's say you're somebody who used to pop your own neck a lot or pop your own lower back a lot and you've created hypermobile bones. Now you've got a layer of instability. So this area of instability, this hypermobile stuff, is making your bones move around. Again, it's good and bad. It's good that you're able to move and they free you up, but it's bad that it's happening in the first place. And this is where a chiropractor needs to work on making your spine more stable. Less hypermobile. Less loosey goosey. How do we do that? You've heard me talk about it a billion times. Stabilization muscles. Now, originally when I went to school, there were three types of muscles. There was cardiac muscles in your heart, smooth muscles in your blood vessels, and skeletal muscles made up the rest. When we looked at the spinal muscles under a gross dissection lab, they looked the exact same as a skeletal muscle. Up to recently, they've always been called skeletal muscle. Until recently. Until recently we put them under a microscope and we realized that when you put them under a microscope they're quite different muscles. They don't have the things that allow you to move them around in space. If you can move your C5 right now in your neck, you wouldn't need a chiropractor, I'd be unemployed. So what happens is the chiropractor has to move those because those muscles can't move independently. These muscles are 100 percent reflexatory. Meaning your eyes will always stay level with the horizon. And if your eyes are not level with the horizon, other spots in your spine will reflexatory move, change, and shift position in order to get you back to where you need to be. So these are reflexatory muscles. Now there's a fourth type of muscle. Your chiropractor needs to work with you and getting your reflexatory muscles stronger and stronger. This way it's harder and harder for you to put those little stresses on your spine. Again, a lot of people even have never even heard of reflexatory muscles, stabilization muscles. So when you talk to somebody about chiropractic, ask them about stabilization muscles, see if they know what those are. Ask them why they're different, see if they know what they're talking about. If they don't know what they're talking about, then stop asking them questions, go ask your chiropractor. When I move around I hear pops and noises, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Yes, it's a good thing and bad thing. It's a good thing you're still able to free it up yourself, but it's a bad thing that's happening in the first place. If this has happened to you, a trip to the chiropractor is definitely warranted. Now, if you're somebody that every time you turn your head to the left has always made a noise since you were six years old, and now you're 56 years old, do you need to rush to the chiropractor? You don't need to rush to the chiropractor, but you should probably find out. Do a deeper dive. But if you're someone that's never experienced this before, now you're starting to turn your head around and you're trying to experience a new noise or new thing, that's definitely something to bring to the chiropractor. Now if you're under a new patient and you're under chiropractic care and you never had this before until you started chiropractic care, that means your chiropractor is unlocking things and making changes in your spine. And that should go away in time as your spine becomes more stable as the chiropractor takes, fixes your posture. And as your chiropractor works with you on making those muscles stronger, this is something that goes away. So if I'm a newer chiropractic patient, I've been going to chiropractor, let's say for two or three weeks now, all of a sudden I turn my head, I hear a click. Never had that before. Not a bad thing. It just means that's part of the healing process and your chiropractor still has some work to do. So there you have it. If you turn your head, you hear a weird click or something like that, just a good or bad thing. Yes, and if you're having more questions about this, because there's so many different causes or reasons why this could happen, go ask a chiropractor. They'll tell you. Ask your physical therapist, medical doctor, or anybody else. They don't know. They'll give you an answer, but they don't know. So always ask a chiropractor. And if you're making, if you're trying to crack your own back, that's like trying to drill your own teeth. I don't think it's a good idea. If you're trying to crack your own back, that's like trying to perform your own surgery. Probably not gonna go well. And if you're trying to crack your own back and don't think you need a chiropractor because you can do it yourself. We're going to meet you eventually in the end and hope there's still a disc in there because remember as the spine locks up and doesn't move the disc dehydrates and goes away and the arthritis kicks in. So if you've been doing this for a long time to yourself, there's a chance that disc is compromised. If that disc is compromised, there's a chance the arthritis process has already begun. So think about that too. All right, As a chiropractor, if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, leave me a comment below wherever you're watching or listening to this and I'll see it and I'll get back to you next time. Thank you.