How Spine Health Affects the Rest of the Body + 3 Things You Can Do to Help
“When in sickness, look to the spine first” - Hippocrates
Your muscles and joints need to move and move often to maintain good health. As humans, we are meant to move, and that movement is paramount not only to survival but also longevity. If we can maintain movement and strength longer, we will often be more resilient to the things that life throws at us. The spine falls into this category as well, for reasons we will get into in this articles, when you keep a strong and healthy spine, you set yourself up for not only feeling better, but for the longer haul.
“Sit-up straight!” – Not Hippocrates
Let’s not confuse a healthy spine with one that has “perfect posture” or some sort of ideal curvature. For that matter, sometimes there are not necessarily postures or mechanisms that can describe nor address all pain and dysfunction adequately. This definitely goes for when we are talking about the spine (or other parts of the body for that matter), so when we discuss how the spine can affect health we are not inferring that there must be a very specific way it should be. Rather, when we are better able to move and control our movement with stability and strength, the outcomes on a variety of health, longevity, as well as fitness metrics are usually better.
How does spine health effect the rest of the body?
The vertebrae and supporting soft tissues are an integral part of movement. The muscles, ligaments, and discs comprising your spine have an intimate relationship with nerve roots that come out from the spinal cord. Whatever happens to not only the muscle(s) but also other tissues closest to the nerve roots are going to affect the amount of friction or pressure placed on those nerves; and this can cause an assortment of referring problems in other areas of the body.
Sometimes this may occur in areas that don’t even seem related, which can lead to long standing issues that don’t resolve easily or in a straightforward manner. The lumbar spine for example, moves your torso forward and back, side to side, and rotates quite a bit using the muscles that connect to the vertebrae and accompanying ribs. The lumbar nerves coming out at the lumbar region - which we will focus on in a bit - innervate the hips, groin, legs, feet, toes, along with autonomic processes like arousal (see diagram below) which can show symptoms.
But first a quick detour into some of what makes up our SPINE…
Your spine is made up of 5 different regions: cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacrum, and coccyx. Each section is comprised of a certain number of vertebrae, which are individual bones that stack to form the spinal column. With exceptions (as folks can be different), the cervical spine is made up of 7 vertebrae, 12 thoracic, and 5 lumbar. Both the sacrum and coccyx can be somewhat fused to create more of a singular piece of bone to support that region of spine. The spine also contains vertebral discs which sit between each vertebra and partially act as a shock absorber, spacer, help hold the vertebrae together, and allow for slight mobility in the spine.
The spine essentially helps provide you both the structure and means to move. Due to the size and shape of the vertebrae, some regions are designed to move more than other parts of the spine as mentioned. The vertebrae and surrounding spine muscles are designed to move relative to each other as well as maintain space to enable us to lean forward, extend back, twist and rotated from side to side without compressing on nerves or vertebral discs.
Importantly, your spinal column also houses a very fragile and important component of the central nervous system: the spinal cord. This spinal cord is a long tube-like structure that travels through an opening in the vertebrae from the brain and continues down almost to the bottom of the spine. It transfers information back and forth between and through the nerve roots, which are the short branches of spinal nerve exiting the spinal cord. Each spinal nerve contains two nerve roots, one motor and one sensory. To differentiate, the motor nerve carries commands from the brain and spine to the muscle; while the sensory nerve carries sensory information such as touch, position, and pain, from the body to the spine and brain. Though pain in the spine and elsewhere in the body can come from a variety of other causes we are going to focus on the role of the nerve roots and joint space between the vertebrae in associated pain or dysfunction.
Anatomy applied to real life
Let’s say someone who normally spends their days with restricted movement patterns like a computer programmer largely staying put at a desk, decides to spend the day out in their garden pulling weeds and lifting heavy bags of soil. On one of their trips moving soil they feel a sudden quick shift in their spine with aching and pressure sensations in their low back. Later that evening as they are back at their computer checking email and finishing a project, they feel increasing pain plus tingling with pins and needles down the back of their left leg. There can be several reasons for this pain and the underlying mechanisms, but commonly and in this scenario the symptoms described above are stemming from a herniated disc compressing nerves in the lumbar spine that form the sciatic nerve (sciatica).
This diagnosis would be considered a radiculopathy which is often a product of changes in various tissues surrounding the nerve root like the vertebrae themselves, their discs, and tendons. This is different from a peripheral nerve entrapment that stems from that nerve getting tangled or pinched somewhere further along the way in the hip or leg.
While this case referenced may have occurred as a fluke or lack of capacity for something as simple as lifting a bag of soil, often it does not need to end this way if using simple tools and habits to foster health and resiliency in the lumbar spine. These same tools can also be used for recovery along with building capacity in that area beyond where it was when it was injured (win-win).
So how do we help this injured programmer recover? There are many routes to help mitigate injury but for now, we’ll focus on maintaining joint space and active range through movement and exercise to help reduce the pressure on nerve root and then regain and build more capacity. One of the best ways to help recover (and more quickly in future setbacks) is to create as much strength and “space” (an FRC term) in the supporting tissues to provide an environment in which the disc can regain integrity and allow the nerve root some relief.
Thankfully, the connection between mind and body is trainable and before these types of injuries occur (and even afterward since herniations heal), we can use specific exercises to help stimulate and reestablish a connection from your brain to the rest of the lumbar vertebrae to maintain better movement, space and overall health of the spine and what it houses.
A big key here and in most situations is to take periodic movement breaks and continually build or maintain strength. There are also some helpful exercises highlighted below to start as part of recovery, establish new connection or add into a current regimen.
3 spine mobility exercises to incorporate daily:
These 3 exercises require very little tools and can be done at home, at the gym, at the office, or anywhere when you need to get your spine moving. There are no ideal sets and reps for these exercises. Think of them as quality over quantity. These exercises will slowly bring sensory and motor input back to the brain allowing for greater recruitment in response to motor or sensory input.
1) Eraser Drill (click for video) = For this drill you will need a rectangular shaped eraser. Lay supine with knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Take your rectangular shaped eraser and place it between the floor and any area of your spine that you feel has a difficult time moving. The eraser will provide sensory feedback to the brain and will allow an easier activation for the motor nerves.
The trick with this exercise is to focus on the part of your spine that feels the pressure of the eraser.
This means that no other part of your body should assist you in the movement. Think about your spine being drawn in to the eraser and stop once you feel more pressure in your back than when you started. Hold this position for a few seconds before allowing your spine to slowly return to its starting position.
If you felt like your shoulders and hips were coming along for the ride, don’t worry, just try again. It takes a while for your brain to find the area you are asking to move, especially if it has not been asked to isolate in this manner. Repeat a few more times before moving on to another part of your spine.
If you are not sure where to start then start at the pant line near your hips and slowly, one vertebra at a time, work your way up. The cervical spine might be challenging if you have a curve that will not allow your vertebra to touch the eraser. Do not worry. You can either stack a few erasers together if there is a larger space or if the neck is touching the floor then simply use a finger there to provide the feedback. Remember this movement is very small so you might not be able to visibly see movement but you should feel it.
2) Cat/Cow (click for video)= Many of us have seen or done this particular exercise. The movement starts with hands and knees on the ground in a quadruped position. Instead of curling your spine up to the ceiling from the center of your back, we are going to start by tucking your tailbone underneath you as you focus on one vertebra at a time pulling up towards the ceiling, like a body roll, until you have reached your maximum flexion.
The end position here looks exactly like the cat position, we have simply initiated the movement from a different part of our spine and doing our best to experience every part of our spine being flexed into a cat. Hold that position for a few seconds. On the way back down, you will start from the tailbone again, this time thinking there is a string attached to the coccyx and it’s pulling you up. This movement is the start of an extension.
Every vertebra from that point is going to feel like it’s being pulled down to the floor in a nice slow controlled wave. This variation of the cat/cow will provide increased awareness to your spine and will help you in accessing parts of your back that you do not use on a day to day basis.
3) Reverse Spine Peel (click for video)= All you need for this exercise is a 1-2in thick book. Cover the book in a towel so that its softer on your back. Lay down with the book under you with the edge of the book lined up along your L1 (for this lumbar example, roughly a few inches above the pant line). You are then going to reverse lift/peel your sacrum and lower lumbar vertebrae off the book till you reach the last vertebrae and keep it firmly on the book. Allow the hips to roll back down. Do a few reps here before moving the book down to L2 and repeat the process.
This movement will become increasingly challenging as you get closer to the sacrum and only one vertebra is being lifted off the book. The intent intent is to create space between the lumbar vertebrae, but you will also feel this deep in your abdominals as an added bonus.
