Cervical Spondylosis 'Delayed' Symptoms. How C/S Symptoms manifest themselves.

[ginger]

Dear Gerry, I ought to have said that your approach viz sleeping postures is entirely fitting and valuable. Your idea about inadvertant postural complicity in the natural inclination spines have where already present irritations and protective behaviours , may become worse with even vague extra loads . I do actualy agree with you. That point may have escaped proper spelling out as it were in my post earlier. I see no reason why your ideas and methods could and should not be further explored, for your own as well as the potential for benefit broadly.
The point I attempted clumsily was that movement trumps rest everytime as the means to 'unlock' protective spinal behaviour leading to pain etc. By unlock here I mean to resolve and eliminate both the behaviour and the symptoms with long term effect.
Happy Ioster, good egg hunting and hope you get amongst the fertility rituals wherever you may over the coming festive period.
Cheers

[gerry the neck]

Of course, I nearly forgot……Happy Easter. Note to self…” must remember not to forget the niceties when I’m stuck in the bunker scratching my theories onto two constantly crumbling stone tablets !”. As ever, some more speculations below.

I’m going to try and explain how the nervous system might behave when it recognises a threat to itself, as might happen when a nerve, exiting the spine, is threatened with compression of any nature. The nervous system, as a highly refined protective system, and besides its other duties, must have an inherent ability to protect itself, perhaps using means which are a bit beyond our comprehension. Otherwise, its function as our primary defence would be vulnerable to malfunction….and this simply must not happen. It would defeat its own purpose.

In the case of a threatened, but not yet compressed, nerve in the neck, that nerve most likely sends a signal, through the brain, to instruct local muscles, close to the vulnerable point, to stiffen up and protect. However, those same muscles are also receiving signals, by means of our default operating processes (again, nerve signals), to do their normal duty of maintaining normal flexibility and functionality of the neck. The neck is a conduit for other vital organs, and their best functioning must be ensured.

So, it seems that the local muscles must be receiving contradictory instructions from the nervous system, and without the ability to determine which might be its primary role, the muscle can enter a phase of repetitive internal conflicts with itself, causing varying symptoms in the surrounding area, or even as referred spasm as in frozen shoulder or cyclical headaches etc. Assuming that the nervous system must be ‘ pre-aware’ of any possible outcome resulting from its protective signalling, we have to assume that it allows this muscle conflict to continue, without either signal taking priority, for a good reason. Perhaps the nervous system has already ‘decided’ that this is better than allowing the stiffening signals to dominate, and thus threaten further other functions of the neck.

So, in summary, perhaps the nervous system allows this muscle conflict and cyclical protective reactions as a less risky alternative to shutting down any specific neck functionality, although such shutting down can occur in more critical circumstances. Although speculative, this might help to explain the variety of symptoms experienced by a C/S patient who doesn’t also display any direct symptoms of actual nerve compression, as occurs with long term C/S with no underlying disease apparent.

How to deal with this possible scenario is the big question here. If it were possible to intervene in such a way that one set of nerve signals could relax their intentions, then, without the confusion of conflicting signals, the other set of signals could also resolve quickly (i.e. achieve their purpose ), and thus the reacting muscles could return to their normal duty of maintaining unstressed functionality. I’m inclined to believe that something of this nature happens when each rough phase of C/S relaxes back to its default status, which is within a range of allowable flexibility.
How to intervene is another question, which I and others here have already gone into before in these postings. What I’ve tried to do here is simply is to try to reduce the nerve behaviour to a less confused description, and hopefully render options for suitable therapies less confusing also.
Gerry

---------- Post added at 12:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:47 PM ----------

ps...forgot to mention that the only fertility rites I engage in these days are cerebral. I know that's unfortunate for anyone who happens upon my postings !
Have a good one !