“The main cause of spinal degeneration is osteoarthritis, an arthritic condition that affects the cartilage that cushions the ends of bones in your joints. With time, the cartilage begins to deteriorate and its smooth surface becomes rough. If it wears down completely, bone may rub painfully on bone. In an attempt to repair the damage, your body may produce bony growths called bone spurs. When these form on the facet joints in the spine, they narrow the spinal canal.”

“With time, the cartilage begins to deteriorate and its smooth surface becomes rough. If it wears down completely…”

The muscles around the spine don’t all go at once. The rate of atrophy depends on the person’s lifestyle and working conditions, but gradually, as the body gets less and less stimulus from the environment, the magical S (curve of the spine) diminishes, taking with it the spine’s flexibility, load-bearing strength, and shock-absorbing capacity.

The standard sugical remedy is to remove the lamina of the vertebrae – basically, one slope of the arch or ridge that runs along the posterior of the spine – enter the canal, and scrape away the calcium.

I have rarely seen a case of stenosis where this procedure was really necessary. Yes, there is calcium in the spinal canal, and there is nerve impingement. But if the lumbar, thoracic, and cervical curves are restored to a functional state, the spinal cord and branching nerve roots usually have enough room to operate without interference.

In this and every circumstance that the body confronts, the old architectural slogan is absolutely right: Form follows function. Reintroduce proper design function, and the form – the structure – isn’t a problem. Back pain, no matter what it is called, is most often a symptom of a breakdown of form that has been generated by a loss of function…Whatever the contributing factors, a pain treatment that starts with function will rarely require you go after the body’s form.

"Those women who’d been formally exercising reported feeling more fatigued and grumpy than the other women, although the two groups’ estimates of mileage and calories burned were almost identical. More telling, when the women sat down to a pasta lunch, with water or sugary soda to drink, and applesauce or chocolate pudding for dessert, the women in the exercise group loaded up on the soda and pudding, consuming significantly more calories from these sweets than the women who’d thought that they were walking for pleasure."

“My results suggest that, following the transition to agriculture in central Europe, males were more affected than females by cultural and technological changes that reduced the need for long-distance travel or heavy physical work,”

“This also means that, as people began to specialise in tasks other than just farming and food production, such as metalworking, fewer people were regularly doing tasks that were very strenuous on their legs.”

"Patients receiving epidural injections of corticosteroids for neck, back, or limb pain are at risk of rare but serious adverse events, including blindness, stroke, paralysis, and death, according to a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warning.

Epidural injections of corticosteroids are a common treatment offered to patients who experience back pain, neck pain, or pain that radiates to the arms and legs. However, such injections are not FDA approved, and there is limited evidence backing their safety or effectiveness, according to the agency. A review of data from the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System found cases of death, spinal cord infarction, paraplegia, quadriplegia, cortical blindness, stroke, seizures, nerve injury, and brain swelling in patients who had received epidural steroid injections. These events occurred within minutes to 2 days after injection. According to the FDA, many of the patients did not recover from these injuries."