Degenerative Disc Disease in Warren, OH

Almost nobody arrives at Back 2 Health Chiropractic in Warren asking about degenerative disc disease. They arrive holding a report that says it, usually after an X-ray or an MRI taken for something else, and the words have been sitting on their mind ever since. Degenerative sounds like it is getting worse. Disease sounds like something is wrong with them specifically. And nobody explained either word, which is why the first thing Dr. John Mistretta usually does with that report is take the frightening part out of it.

Degenerative disc disease is not a disease, and for most people it is not a catastrophe. It is a description of discs that have thinned and dried with time, which happens to nearly everyone who lives long enough, and it is found on the imaging of a great many people who have no back pain at all. What matters is not the phrase on the report. It is whether the change on the film matches your symptoms and your examination, and what the joints around those discs are doing. This page explains what disc degeneration actually is, why the name is misleading, when it causes pain and when it does not, what chiropractic care can and cannot do about it, and what a visit here looks like.

What Disc Degeneration Actually Is

A disc is a tough fibrous ring around a soft, water-rich center, and it works as a spacer and a shock absorber between two vertebrae. Over the years the center loses water, the disc gets thinner, the ring stiffens, and the space between the two vertebrae narrows. The joints at the back of those vertebrae, which were built to share the load, now carry more of it, and the body often responds by building extra bone around them.

That is degeneration, and it is a process rather than an event. It happens faster with old injuries, heavy or repetitive loading, smoking, and years of a spine that has been out of balance, and slower in a spine that moves well and is loaded evenly. It is not the same thing as a herniated disc, although the two can occur together; the disc injury page on this site covers herniation.

Why the Name Is Misleading

Disease implies something abnormal, and disc thinning is nearly universal after middle age. Imaging studies routinely find degenerative changes in large numbers of people with no symptoms whatsoever, which means the finding by itself does not explain anyone's pain. It also implies a progressive slide, and while discs do continue to thin with age, the pain that comes with degeneration does not track the imaging in a straight line. Many patients feel better as the years pass and the segment stiffens, and Dr. John will tell you that rather than let the word do the frightening for him.

What he will not do is dismiss it. Degeneration changes how a spine works, it loads the joints around the disc, and it narrows the space the nerves travel through, which is where the symptoms that do occur come from.

When It Causes Symptoms and When It Does Not

Degeneration produces symptoms when it changes something functional. A narrowed disc space loads the joints behind it, and those joints become the source of a deep, aching low back or neck pain that is worse after standing or sitting for a long time and eases with a change of position. A narrowed space where a nerve exits can irritate that nerve, producing pain, tingling, or numbness down an arm or a leg. And a segment that has stiffened makes the segments above and below it work harder, which is where much of the pain actually comes from.

Degeneration produces no symptoms at all when the segment is stiff but stable, the joints around it are moving well, and the nerve spaces are open. That describes a great many people carrying the same words on their report.

What the Examination Adds That the Report Cannot

The report tells Dr. John what your discs look like. The examination tells him what your spine is doing: which joints have lost their motion, which are moving too much to compensate, whether a nerve is being irritated and where, how your hips and mid-back are sharing the load, and whether the findings on the film line up with the place that actually hurts. Two people with identical reports can need entirely different plans, and one of them may need no care at all beyond the tools.

Bring the report and the images if you have them. He will read them with you in plain language, and he will tell you honestly which parts of the film matter for your symptoms and which are ordinary for your age.

What Chiropractic Care Can and Cannot Do

It cannot rehydrate a disc or restore lost disc height, and Dr. John will not tell you it can. What it can do is address the part of the problem that is mechanical, which is most of what produces the pain: restoring motion to the joints that have stiffened around the degenerated segment, taking load off the segments that have been compensating, correcting the alignment that loads the disc unevenly, and easing the nerve irritation where a narrowed space is involved. A degenerated spine that moves well and is loaded evenly is far more comfortable than the same spine with three stiff segments and a tilted pelvis.

Everyone responds differently, and he will tell you what he expects for your situation after the examination rather than what sounds impressive.

Corrective Care and Alignment

Dr. John is Advanced Certified in Chiropractic BioPhysics, a structural approach organized around measuring spinal alignment, correcting what can be corrected, and measuring again. It matters here because alignment determines how the load is distributed across a disc. A neck that has lost its curve or a low back that is out of balance loads its discs unevenly, which is one of the things that drives degeneration in the first place. Correcting what can be corrected does not reverse the years, but it changes how the remaining disc height is loaded going forward, which is the part that is still in play. The Chiropractic BioPhysics page on this site explains the approach.

Living With a Degenerating Spine

The tools matter more here than the visits, because a disc is loaded by ordinary life. How you lift, how long you sit before getting up, whether the hips do their share of the bending, how you sleep, whether the weight the spine carries is going up or down, and whether you keep moving at all. Motion is what feeds a disc; discs have no blood supply of their own and rely on movement to exchange fluid, which is one of the reasons a spine that keeps moving does better than one that is rested. Dr. John will show you the specific movements and habits for your spine, and those are the tools you keep.

Age, Wear, and What Is Realistic

A spine that has carried a person for six decades shows it, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. What is realistic is a spine that moves through the range it still has, is loaded evenly, and is supported by muscles that are doing their job, and for most patients that is the difference between a back that limits the day and one that does not. When degeneration has advanced to the point that a surgical opinion belongs in the conversation, Dr. John will say so and get you to the right specialist.

How Dr. John Evaluates It

Health care is not one size fits all, and a report that says degenerative disc disease says almost nothing about what a particular person needs. So the examination starts with your history: where it hurts, what makes it better or worse, whether anything travels into an arm or a leg, whether there is stiffness in the morning and how long it lasts, whether there was ever an injury, and what you have tried.

Then comes a thorough examination of the spine at the level involved and the segments above and below it, the hips and mid-back that share its load, and how your spine, nervous system, and joints are working together, with specific tests for nerve irritation. When it is needed, X-ray imaging is done right in the office, and Dr. John reads any imaging you bring first. Then he explains what he found, in plain language, and exactly what it will take to correct the part that is correctable.

Care and What It Looks Like Over Time

Care uses evidence-based methods and specific, scientific, gentle adjusting techniques, chosen for a spine with less margin than it used to have. Early on, visits are closer together, because segments that have been stiff for years do not hold a correction after one adjustment; as motion returns and holds, visits spread out. Soft tissue therapy addresses the muscles that have been guarding the stiff segment, and rehabilitation and exercise therapy rebuilds the support around it. Our goal is not to keep you coming in forever. It is to get you feeling better and to give you the tools to manage your own health.

When It Needs More Than Chiropractic Care

Weakness in an arm or a leg that is getting worse, numbness in both legs or the groin, loss of bladder or bowel control, or a foot that drags needs emergency evaluation and a surgical opinion. Back pain with fever, unexplained weight loss, or a history of cancer needs a physician. Pain that wakes you every night and does not change with position needs to be looked at rather than adjusted. Those are not chiropractic problems until they have been ruled out. For everything else, the examination here will tell us what is mechanical and what is not. If your problem is something we can't help you with, we will get you to someone who can.

Back 2 Health Chiropractic in Warren

Dr. John Mistretta has practiced chiropractic for 39 years and has been part of the Howland area for the last 20 of them. Back 2 Health Chiropractic is at 260 Niles Cortland Rd NE, Suite B, Warren, Ohio 44484, and sees patients from Warren, Howland, Niles, Cortland, Champion, and across Trumbull County.

Office hours are Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 9:00 to 12:00 and 2:00 to 6:00, with Tuesday and Friday appointments available by arrangement. The practice is rated 5.0 on Google across more than 300 reviews.

If you are holding a report with those words on it, call (330) 856-3236. We are thorough, we communicate, and we have the experience to know what works.