Do you have lower back pain? And have you been told that you have a Spondylolisthesis? Or do you suspect that you might have a Spondylolisthesis? It is quite a tongue twister, as it’s already done to mine. And it is a confusing thing to understand, it’s a scary thing to be diagnosed with.

Chances are, if you’re watching this video, and you’ve been looking up information about a spondylolisthesis, you’ve been told that you have one or maybe a relative of yours got one and your back’s hurting, because this is causing back pain. And you’re concerned that you have one, I’m going to explain to you all about what Spondylolisthesis is ,what’s commonly done for treatments, and what natural alternatives are out there to treat a spondylus thesis and get successful long term relief, without having to have surgery rely on medications, or have injections on a regular basis.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist. I have a company called El Paso Manual Physical Therapy and we help people get back to being healthy active and mobile without injections, surgery or medications. We’ve been helping people out specifically with back pain that is a Spondylolisthesis case, a known spondylolisthesis case for years. And we’ve had amazing success rate with these.

Once we identify the problem, and we look at all the mechanics, the way the muscles attach the weaknesses in the individual. And we look at the global picture as well as the specific issues that are at each vertebrae in each joint, we’ve been able to come up with successful treatment plans to get that and that bonus shift back in the correct position. And of course, keep that individual away from having to have a surgery, but also give them the confidence that they can go do the activities that they were doing before without making the problem worse in the future.

But what I’m going to do through this video today is describe exactly what a spondylolisthesis is, in case you’ve never really looked it up or haven’t found a great explanation on it. And then we’re going to talk about treatment options, natural treatment options that are out there so that you can begin to find relief for this problem and come comfort confidence as well. But you can fix this naturally without having to have a surgery.

What a spondylolisthesis is, I got the spine here just to show you, you have the vertebrae here, the vertebrae are the bones of the spine. In the lower back, it’s called the lumbar area, you’ve got five and the most common site where a spondylolisthesis happens is where the bottom vertebrae connects to the tailbone, there’s a disc there. And what happens in a spondylolisthesis is that bone starts to slip forward, there’s different grades is what they call it, which means intensities of or severities of how far the bonus the forward.

And the more severe it is, obviously, the more the disc is involved, the more nerves can get pinched. And in extreme cases, the bone on the backside can break or fracture. And that’s usually a surgical situation right away. And you know, when you feel it, in case, you’re watching this video thinking to add a fracture, typically the signs that people have or they’re having bowel and bladder problems, which means they’re having accidents. They are having lots of leg pain, inability to walk or extreme difficulty walking.

And it’s unrelenting pain, I mean, it’s like they can’t even sleep, they can’t do normal activities, working or going to school doing day to day activities, or you can’t do it, you’re just you’re going to go to the hospital, very likely in that situation, and go have a surgery to make sure that fractures in position so that you’re not having any long term problems.

But if you’re not in those situations, thankfully, what is likely happening is that bone is shifting forward, and your disk is getting aggravated nerves are getting aggravated, and you’re beginning to feel maybe some pain down the legs, but nothing that’s stopping you completely from doing everything. And hopefully you haven’t had any accidents that are more than normal if you’re having accidents for whatever reason. But it when the trick here is to get that bone to come backwards.

Oftentimes if you’re diagnosed with a spondylolisthesis, what happens the experience that people have is they’re having back pain, it’s hurting, they go to the doctor, the doctor will typically want to do X rays whenever there’s back pain because it’s a normal thing to do. It’s relatively cheap compared to MRI. And w can get a lot of information from it. And when they do the X ray, they’ll be able to see right away that that bonus shifted forward.

They’ll start talking about a spondylolisthesis, they’ll be looking for the fracture obviously, and they’ll be looking to grade it to tell you how severe it is. They’ll they might send you the physical therapy at that point, which is great, you got to make sure that you find the physical therapist that really understands all the muscle imbalances and the way to correct the movements and the strength in the area in a way that sets the bone backwards into the position where it’s supposed to be, so that they can allow the disc to heal, take pressures off the joints back here and the nerves and allow you to heal for the long term.

So you’re not having a surgery, finding a physical therapist with that specialization is a little tricky at times. So what I recommend you do is interview the physical therapists office make sure that they’ve seen this kind of case, and that they can help them naturally. Usually physical therapists that aren’t familiar with spondylolisthesis cases will be that they’re aware of the diagnosis, but they’ll have this response, they’ll say spondylolisthesis, they’ll say, I don’t want anything to do with that you go see the surgeon.

And that means that they’re not confident they’re not confident or comfortable with handling that kind of case. So that’s a clear indication, if you’re out there interviewing physical therapy clinics for your treatment, that’s a clear indication that you probably don’t want to be that clinic, because they’re not going to know what to do with you. They’re just not well versed in handling a case like that, naturally, they defer to the surgeon.

If you’re in that, if you’re caught in that right now, and you got sent back to the surgeon because your therapist doesn’t want to deal with you. Don’t panic, and I would continue to interview physical therapists just to find one that you think will be able to help you out based on your conversation with them. Because what happens with the surgeon is sometimes the feedback that they’ll get from the therapist is that it’s more severe.

The presentation that you had with a therapist or the therapist clinic is that it’s more severe than the surgeon might have thought. And they’re more likely to recommend surgery at that point, because they want to help you out they want to be good by you. And if they if there are no physical therapists out there that can help you then they’re going to think, well, it’s not a therapy situation. Let’s go ahead and do surgery. Hold your horses and get in surgery, make sure you go find the right therapist first is what I’m trying to communicate with you.

Now let’s just say if you hadn’t seen a doctor, for some reason, let’s just go through how to feel if you’ve got a spondylolisthesis, and maybe if you’ve already been diagnosed with one, you can confirm this yourself. And let’s look at the back of the spine. You see these bones right here and how they have this, this part that sticks out in the back that is called the spinous process.

The way that this skeleton is shaped and positioned is normal. So you can see here that that’s the bottom vertebrae of L5 bone right there, it’s a little more backwards than the fourth one, what we find here with the people that have a spondylolisthesis is we’ll find that this bone edge is right in line with L four, or even deep, too far deep.

So when we go back here and feel it, you’ll feel kind of a bump that shouldn’t be there. And it’s typically very tender on individuals. So if you just reach out to your back under your shirt, and just feel all the bones there in the in the area. And if you feel one spot that specifically tender and you feel like there’s a bump in the area, chances are you got a spondylus thesis.

Of course, if you’re not a physician, or as a physical therapist knows how to diagnose this kind of stuff. You all you have right now is a suspicion you want to go get checked out. If you haven’t been yet and get diagnosed via an X ray. Or some people want to get an MRI too, that’s fine, you can usually diagnose via MRI as well. Another telltale sign that you’ve got to spondylolisthesis is because there’s popping sensations in your back.

Now this is a weird thing. But if you have it, you’ll know it. It typically happens when getting up out of bed. Like if you do a sit up type motion to get up out of bed people will often feel like a click or a shift or pop, it’ll happen in their lower back or in their pelvis area because it’s that joint is pretty low in the lower back.

Another time people report feeling is when they’re doing exercises specifically, like setup type exercises, abdominal exercises, and the worst is the ones where you pick up your legs, like doing leg lifts. So if you are flat on your back, and then you go to pick up your legs from there to work out your abdominals that can often create like a popping or clicking sensation.

Sometimes it’s not even painful. A lot of times it’s not painful. But what is the sign of is that there’s an instability there in the lower back because that bone is shifting forward. And you’re just shifting it even further forward. So you want to avoid doing those types of exercises that create that popping or clicking sensation.

So if you’re thinking, Well what do I do if I don’t want surgery? I want to treat this naturally. What treatment options are out there? Where should I start? If I’m at home, what would I begin to do? One thing that you can do that will cause an immediate amount of stability and support to come to this area is to use a brace like a lumbar support or a back brace, which you can get fairly reasonably priced at any sporting goods store or a department store.

You can order those online and you’ll have to brace yourself up pretty good. And that usually gives yourself some relief because it takes pressure off the bones and doesn’t allow it to shift so much. Just know that that’s a short term solution, that’s not going to solve the problem for the long term, you’ve got to get your muscles right within your body so that you can pull that bone into the right position and allow it to heal the discs, the ligaments, all the other tissues that attach to that bone that should forward needs to heal.

The brace is a great substitute for taking pain medication. Now about pain medication, I’m not a physician, I can’t give you recommendations on how to take pain medication Exactly. But I have had patients that say that I put the brace on. And I feel like I don’t need ibuprofen for the day, cool, that saves your liver and your kidneys and other things that affects your stomach. So the back brace might be a great alternative. If you feel like that works for you.

The second most important thing to do is to avoid exercises and movements that reproduce your back pain and that make that clicking noise happen that clicking sensation happen. Because that sensation may not be painful, but you don’t want it’s kind of a party trick for some people to even be able to pick up their legs straight away and say, Look, he feel that click, click click. And it doesn’t really hurt them. But if you’re doing that, you’re just repeatedly shifting that bone and working on making that disc looser and looser and you’re irritating tissues over time.

Don’t be doing that make sure you avoid that motion. If you find that getting up out of bed is always causing that clicking or popping sensation. Avoid that to certain exercises or activities like especially where you’re bent over for a period of time, like gardening, doing certain chores around the house, you want to get help with those or see if you can minimize your time there if it’s something that needs to get done, so that you can protect your back from getting worse.

And the final thing that I’ll tell you that’s really super important kind of beginning of what we teach here in the clinic is learn how to fire your lower abdominal specifically. And I’m talking lower abdominals because if we flip this around here, if all this is your abdominal space right here, at about the midpoint in your abs is where your belly buttons should be.

When muscles tense up at that level, it generally tensions up the stability at L three, which is in the middle of the lumbar spine. So if you go into the lower abdominals down by the pubic bone, if you tense up that area better, you will begin to shift these bones in the right direction. Now just a side note here, we have a program called the 28 Day Back Health And Wellness Boost Program that teaches you exactly how to fire these lower abdominals very, very well.

It’s a 28 day program. It’s all online, you can do this at your own pace. But if you watch the videos learn, it’s me teaching you how to fire your abdominals as well as progress through a back pain issue. So that you can solve it for the long term. We have other exercises a slew of exercises. It’s what we teach our clients here in the clinic that are having this kind of problem. It’s all the exercises in a progression so that this issue can be resolved naturally without surgery.

Now we show you on the exercises in that 28 Day Back Health And Wellness Boost Program, how to modify them so that if you’re real severe in your back issue right now you can make them a little less intense, so it’s not flaring things up. And then also, if you’re feeling that clicking sensation happened, you can begin to do the exercises in a way that reduces the clicking sensation. So it’s all modifiable.

And at the same rate on the other end, you can if you’re feeling better, you’re not irritated, the clicking reducing are gone. You can use these exercises to make sure that you’re stabilizing things further, because you can up the intensity on them. And you can protect yourself from having this problem return in the future so that you can successfully avoid surgery injections and medications for the long term.

If you’re watching this video right now, and you think you might have a spondylolisthesis, or you know that you have one because you got told that and you’re really concerned about having surgery because sometimes those don’t go the best. Here’s what I want you to do, you can ask us about getting a free discovery visit with us. In order to do that, go up to the top of our website here and hit the inquire about cost and availability button or it might say cost and availability. And leave us your details and one of my staff will call you back right away, to listen to your story about your back issue your spondylus thesis problem and see if it’s right for you to come into our clinic to get help with a free discovery visit.

A discovery visit is where you get to sit down with a specialist physical therapist will be able to diagnose this issue, make sure that it is what it is, and begin to help you with the problem if you choose to hire us for it. And it’s a 20-minute consultation and we will talk to a Doctor of Physical Therapy who specializes in fixing this type of problem naturally, and then decided this is right for you.

I hope that we can be a part of your success story really soon so that you’re not having to have a surgery or living on medications or injections and so that you can get back to doing the you love with confidence that you’re not going to make a spaniel, this thesis or any other lower back problem worse over time. Have the best day

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