From Chronic Pain to Healing: What Your San Jose Chiropractor Wants You to Know About Recent Discoveries
If you suffer with chronic low back pain, you know how bothersome it can be when treatments only deliver short term relief. While we don't have all the answers yet, new research is helping us all better understand why discs degenerate and exploring new approaches that may eventually offer more effective treatments. Chiropractic Solutions is keeping a close eye on all of this to help our San Jose back pain patients best.
Understanding Your Disc Health: The Hydration Factor
Your intervertebral discs are like spongy spacers that sit between your spine bones, filled mostly with water-based molecules called proteoglycans. When these discs lose their water content over time, they can't absorb shock as effectively, contributing to pain and further breakdown. While staying hydrated won't heal disc problems, it may assit your discs' natural function—though we still need more research to completely grasp how this works. We can talk more at your next San Jose chiropractic visit about ways to hydrate your discs.
Early Promise: Lab-Grown Disc Components
Chopra and his research group (1) have displayed progress in manufacturing "biomimetic proteoglycans"—synthetic copies of your disc's essential materials. In laboratory studies, these engineered molecules can mimic some properties of healthy disc tissue. However, these studies are just starting, and it may take time to determine if this treatment will be both safe and effective for people|this research is still in its infancy, and it will likely be some time before we know if this approach can safely and effectively help human patients like our San Jose back pain patients.
Why Decompression Techniques May Help
Exploring Natural Pain Pathways
Some of the most preliminary research by Melrose and colleagues (3) is examining whether compounds from natural sources, including venoms (wow!), could be developed into targeted pain treatments. This work is still in its beginning phases and concentrates on figuring out how pain works rather than developing ready-to-use treatments. It may be many years before we see real-world applications, if any emerge at all. Wow!
What This Means for Your Current Treatment
While these research developments are hopeful, they don't change your immediate treatment options. What they do suggest is:
- Lifestyle factors like hydration and movement patterns may be more important than we previously grasped.
- Current treatments your chiropractor uses may have stronger scientific support than before.
- Future treatment options are being researched, though timeline and success remain uncertain.
- Managing expectations is important—breakthrough treatments take time to develop and prove safe.
The reality is that back pain treatment is still challenging, and while research is advancing our understanding, most of these discoveries take time. Your best approach remains working with your San Jose chiropractor at Chiropractic Solutions who knows current evidence-based treatments like Cox® Technic while staying up-to-date about emerging research.
CONTACT Chiropractic Solutions
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. James Cox, on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he illustrates how The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management talks about disc degeneration and the back pain that comes with it.
