The Vertebrae

December 2, 2008 by soreback · Leave a Comment 

People often use the term “my back” when they could mean so many areas of the body; the back actually extends from the neck to the coccyx or tailbone, the area just above the buttocks. Any of these areas can cause problems and pain, and can even affect the shoulders, the stomach, the legs, and give a person headaches. The structure of the back and its connections to the rest of the body are typically to blame; let’s take a closer look at that.

The vertebrae

Vertebrae

Vertebrae

The bones and joints of the back are referred to as the vertebrae. You may have heard of animals that are called invertebrates; these are ones that don’t have bones up their back such as jellyfish and other sea creatures like this. For humans, our spine or these bones help to keep us upright and hold everything in place, just like the bones in any other area of the body do.

Discs are between each small bone of the vertebrae and act as shock absorbers for when a person moves. While most people don’t really have that much of an appreciation for the discs in their back, imagine the spine being one long immobile rod – how would we bend, twist, lean forward, lean backwards, and so on? We need to do all those things in order to move around – we twist our back when we want to look left or right or over a shoulder; the back needs to curve in order for us to move from a sitting to a standing position; it needs to be flexible in order to allow the arms to reach forward without the entire body moving forward, etc. Oftentimes we just don’t appreciate how much the back needs to move throughout the course of our everyday activities.

The spine needs to be more flexible than any other part of the body, even more so than the fingers or knees. As much as we bend our fingers and knees throughout our daily activity, they don’t need to twist around the way the back does and certainly don’t need to be as flexible.

All of this bending and twisting means that the backbone or spine cannot be one long rigid rod the way we have long bones in the arms or legs. The spine is a serious of small bones about the size of tuna cans, and in between each one is a disc. These are spongy, squishy little globs not only help the back to be flexible but take much of the shock of our everyday movement. When you walk, sit, or do anything that involves contact there is pressure put on the body. These discs absorb that pressure so that the bones and muscles don’t feel it and so that there is less injury. Think of it this way – which is more comfortable, a hard wooden chair or one that is cushioned or overstuffed? Obviously the cushiony one. These discs act like those cushions whenever we move, absorbing the impact of not just jarring movements but everyday activities as well. Without those discs our bones, muscles and tendons would be in constant pain from the impact of even minor movements.

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When a disc is injured or damaged then there is usually back pain, and if the injury is severe then the pain is severe as well. We need every one of those discs in the back to function properly in order for the back to be protected and to function painlessly.

Filed under: Back Physiology
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