Arthritis Pain Relief Stretches | Chiropractor for Arthritis in Belmar, NJ
Hi everybody, Dr. Jodi Kinney. Today I want to show you some of the best stretches that you can do if you have stenosis, which is a type of arthritis in the lower back spine. So we use the terms arthritis, osteoarthritis, degenerative joint disease, all these terms physicians kind of use these interchangeably. Stenosis is a form of arthritis where we get degenerative or or or changes abnormal changes to the bony changes to the spine that go posterior into like the spinal cord area.
So when we look at what a disc looks like, and what arthritis looks like on a segmental spine, here I’ll come and show you, normally what we should see is that you have nice big spaces. In between the bones, nice smooth rounded edges, nice big openings or holes, that’s where all the nerves exit out. When you have degeneration in the form of stenosis, we get bone spurring and lipping loss of disk space, which ultimately those bone spurs can go posteriorley into where the spinal cord would be going down and affects the nerves tremendously and can be very, very painful. For a person who has stenosis, typically, the people who have stenosis are my seniors.
And so what I’m going to do today is show you some gentle stretches and exercises that you can do, if you have stenosis can give you back pain. But a lot of the time, it gives leg pain. So some of my seniors who come in, they say I don’t even really have back pain, but I have tremendous leg pain, what is usually a telltale sign that there’s some sort of stenosis involved. Okay, so let me show you some of the stretches that I like to do for stenosis. So, starting off laying on your back on a hard surface, the bed floor mat, something like that, keeping your knees bent and your core tight. Ultimately, you always want to have your core as tight and hold tight as possible. And just start with doing knees to chest. So you want to pull your knees into your chest and hold this for a good, you know, 8 to 10 Deep breaths. And then you want to drop it back down. And then you’re going to do it again, I would do this for five, maybe six times holding 10 Deep breaths each time. And then I would try to do the one knee up too. So bringing one knee up, holding it a good 10 Deep breaths. And then you’re going to switch sides, do the other knee up again, want to make sure your core is nice and tight when you’re doing this and you feel the stretch all in the back of a hip in the back of the glutes.
And then what I always like to do is add a little bit of a rotary component. So the next time you bring your knee up, you want to go opposite hand to the opposite knee and pull over across your body. So that’s going to increase the stretch in the lower back and the glute in the lower part in the upper part of the leg. And that’s going to cause a little rotation in the lumbar spine as well. So same thing, you’re going to pull the knee up, opposite hands opposite knee, you don’t want to rotate your hips around, you want to keep your hips flat on the surface on the bed or the floor and just pull your knee over, that’s going to increase the stretch in the leg, the glutes up into the lower back. It’s a really good, lower back stretch if you’re doing it correctly. So again, you want to bring the knee up, hug it to the chest, breathing into it and then just pull the knee over across your body with the opposite hands. And then do it again the other side, pulling it up and then pulling it across your body. Okay.
Another core strengthening exercises I like I’d like for stenosis is called a bridge. So keeping your pelvis and your lower back pinned to the floor, you’re going to bend your knees up, tighten the core up and then try to raise your pelvis and your lower body up off the floor. This tightens up all the muscles in the back of the legs, the glutes and the lower back. keeping the core nice and tight, kind of tightens everything up and then drop up and down. Again, you’re going to try to hold these stretches for like a good six to 10 breaths every time you do it. Okay, and then drop it down.
The last stretch that I like to do is one that’s really a nice spine opener and you could do this seated. So if you’re sitting on an airplane for a long period of time or in a theater, I mean you may look a little weird doing it but it does help to kind of stretch your spine out if you’re in a seated position. So what you want to do is try to sit tall and then you’re going to just reach through the floor, keep again, your core as tight as you can. And just reach and try to open your entire spine up, tuck your head. And so that’s going to stretch your whole lower back out. And then just come sit up again. So that really helps to open up your spine, open up the pelvis a little bit. Again, keeping the, you know, the core nice and tight. We just want to try to palm the floor and get as far down to the floor as you can. It really is a nice gentle spinal stretch that you can try to do. Again, if you’re sitting long periods of time, it’s a good way to try to open it up. Okay, so these are some of my favorite stretches that you could do.
If you’re struggling with degeneration, arthritis in your lower back, spine, even stenosis. Try to add those to your daily routine a couple times a day, make sure you’re breathing deeply through them. Never hold your breath when you’re stretching. And that’s my info for you today. So I hope I get to see you all real soon. Thanks so much for tuning in.
