Are You Sure Your Spine is Working Correctly?
Your spine is very, very important because it is your body’s central support structure. It keeps you and your body upright and it also connects the different parts of your skeleton—such as your head, chest, pelvis, shoulders, arms, and legs—to each other. At the same time, although it’s made of a chain of bones, it is “flexible” due to elastic ligaments and spinal disks.
The length depends on a person’s height. The average length of a person’s spine is 71 cm in men and 61 cm in women. Your spine has a ton of functions: It carries the weight of your head, torso and arms, and allows your body to move in any direction. Some sections are more flexible than others, and it’s designed that way for a reason. As you know, your neck is the most flexible part.
Your spine also surrounds and protects your delicate spinal cord. This important part of your nervous system runs through the middle of your spinal canal. Viewed from the side, there are normally four slight natural curves in an adult spine: The cervical (neck) and lumbar (lower back) sections curve inward, and the thoracic (upper back) and sacral (lower spine) sections curve outward. These curves make you and your spine stable, helping you keep your balance when you are in an upright position, act as a shock absorber when you walk, and protect the individual bones in your spine (the vertebrae) from fractures. Adults normally have 26 vertebrae, from top to bottom:
- 7 cervical vertebrae
- 12 thoracic vertebrae
- 5 lumbar vertebrae
- 1 sacrum (made up of 5 fused sacral vertebrae)
- 1 tailbone (made up of 4 fused coccygeal vertebrae)
The lower down the vertebrae are in your spine, the more weight they have to carry. That is why the lower vertebrae are larger and more stable than the top vertebrae. That doesn’t completely prevent damage, though, which is why it’s so important to keep your spine limber and your body healthy.
Dr. Scott Cabazolo
(540) 622-6400
112 E 6th Street
Front Royal, VA 22630
naturalresultschiro@yahoo.com