Cervical spondylosis, also known as cervical spine syndrome, is a general term for cervical osteoarthritis, proliferative cervicitis, cervical nerve root syndrome, and cervical disc prolapse, which is a disorder based on degenerative pathological changes, mainly due to long-term cervical spine strain, osteophytes, or disc prolapse and ligament thickening, resulting in cervical spinal cord, nerve root or vertebral artery compression, and a series of dysfunctional clinical syndromes. It is a syndrome of cervical disc degeneration itself and a series of secondary pathological changes, such as vertebral joint instability, loosening, nucleus pulposus protrusion or prolapse, bone spur formation, ligamentous hypertrophy and secondary spinal stenosis, which stimulate or compress the adjacent nerve roots, spinal cord, vertebral artery and cervical sympathetic nerve and other tissues, and cause a variety of symptoms and signs.
Prevalent groups.
1, prolonged low reading, sitting office personnel: long-term head and neck in a single position, leading to prolonged low reading, sitting office personnel susceptible to cervical spondylosis caused by local over-activity, damage to local intervertebral discs, ligaments, etc., susceptible to cervical spondylosis.
2, head and neck trauma personnel: head and neck trauma does not directly cause cervical spondylosis, but is often an aggravating factor for cervical spondylosis symptoms, some patients due to cervical spine osteophytes, cervical disc bulge, soft tissue lesions in the spinal canal caused by cervical spinal canal in a narrow critical state, plus neck trauma often induced symptoms, and even paralysis occurs. Inadequate neck massage is also often reported in the occurrence of paralysis.
3, bad posture: such as lying in bed watching TV, reading books, high pillow, sleeping in a sitting position, etc.; sleeping on a sleeper car, poor muscle protection when sleeping, easy to have neck injury when braking.
4, cervical spine structure dysplasia: congenital small spinal canal is also the basis for the development. The incidence of cervical spondylosis is one times higher than normal in people with a narrow central spinal canal and nerve root canal.
Main symptoms
The symptoms of cervical spondylosis are very rich, diverse and complex. Most patients start with mild symptoms and gradually worsen them later, while some have more severe symptoms. One type is often combined with several other types, which is called mixed cervical spondylosis.
The main symptoms are:
1. Neck and shoulder pain can be radiated to the head and occipital region and upper limbs;
2.Heavy feeling in the back of one shoulder, weakness in the upper limb, numbness of the fingers, loss of sensation in the skin of the limb, weakness in holding things in the hand, and sometimes unconscious gripping of things on the ground.
3.Serious typical manifestations are: weakness of the lower limbs, unstable walking, numbness of the second foot, and the feeling of stepping on cotton when walking.
4. In the most serious cases, there is even loss of control of bowel movements and urination, sexual dysfunction, and even tetraplegia.
5, often accompanied by head, neck, shoulder, back and arm pain, neck and neck stiffness, limited movement.
6.Some of them are accompanied by dizziness, house rotation, heavy cases are accompanied by nausea and vomiting, bedridden, a few may have vertigo and sudden collapse.
7.When cervical spondylosis involves sympathetic nerve, dizziness, headache, blurred vision, swelling of the second eye, dryness, inability to open the second eye, tinnitus, ear blockage, loss of balance, tachycardia, panic, tight c feeling in the chest, and some even have symptoms such as gastrointestinal distension. There are also symptoms such as dysphagia and dysphonia.
Most of the symptoms are mild at the onset and are not taken seriously, most of them can recover on their own, sometimes light and sometimes heavy, and only when the symptoms continue to worsen and cannot be reversed and affect work and life do they get attention. If the disease is left untreated for a long time, it can cause psychological damage and produce symptoms such as insomnia, irritability, anger, anxiety, and depression.
Treatment methods
Treatment with medication
1, oral drug therapy: mainly used for pain relief, local anti-inflammatory, relaxation muscle treatment, for cervical instability and other secondary local soft tissue strain and other efficacy is clear, but can not treat cervical spondylosis at the root. For patients with weakness or numbness of the limbs, neurotrophic drugs can also be used to assist rehabilitation and promote recovery of the compressed nerves.
2, traction method: through the mutual balance between traction force and anti-traction force, the head and neck is relatively fixed in the physiological curve state, so that the cervical spine curve incorrect phenomenon gradually changed, but its efficacy is limited, only suitable for mild neurogenic cervical spondylosis patients; and in the acute period, traction is prohibited to prevent local inflammation, edema aggravation.
3, physiotherapy: physiotherapy is the abbreviation of physical therapy. It is the application of natural and artificial physical factors, such as sound, light, electricity, heat, magnetism and other effects on the human body, in order to achieve the purpose of treatment and prevention of disease. However, its effect is also weak and cannot be treated at the root. And often physical therapy is easy to produce burns on the skin.
4, Chinese medicine is profound, the efficacy but with the doctor’s personal experience has a lot to do with, need to be carefully selected.
Surgical treatment
For patients with cervical spondylosis with clear diagnosis, serious symptoms of nerve root compression and no significant improvement of symptoms after conservative treatment, surgery should be adopted, while for patients with spinal cord type cervical spondylosis, i.e. patients who mainly show symptoms such as walking weakness and unstable walking of both lower limbs, surgery should be implemented as early as possible to obtain good recovery effect, because the treatment effect of such patients is closely related to the length of nerve compression. For patients with vertebral artery and sympathetic nerve excitation, the results of surgery are relatively less definite.
Non-surgical treatment
Treatment methods for cervical spondylosis can be divided into two categories: non-surgical treatment and surgical treatment. At present, most medical experts advocate non-surgical treatment for cervical spondylosis, and only a few cases require surgical treatment. Non-surgical treatment is a combination of Chinese and Western medicine, and one or two to three of these methods can be used according to different situations and performed simultaneously. They are introduced as follows.
Manual massage and tui-na therapy
This is the main method of treatment of cervical spondylosis in Chinese medicine, and is also a more effective treatment measure for cervical spondylosis. Its therapeutic effect is to relieve the tension and spasm of the neck and shoulder muscles, restore the cervical spine activities, release the nerve roots and soft tissue adhesions to relieve the symptoms, spinal cord type cervical spondylosis generally prohibits gravity massage and reset, otherwise it is very easy to aggravate the symptoms, and may even lead to paraplegia, even if the early symptoms are not obvious, surgery is generally recommended.
Cervical spine traction therapy
This is a more effective and widely used treatment method for cervical spondylosis, which is applicable to all types of cervical spondylosis except spinal cord type, and is more effective for early cases.
Physiotherapy
In the treatment of cervical spondylosis, physiotherapy can play a variety of roles. It is generally believed that in the acute stage, the iontophoresis, ultrasound, ultraviolet light or intermittent current are feasible; after the pain is reduced, ultrasound, iontophoresis, induction electricity or other heat therapy are used.
Warm compress
This treatment can improve blood circulation, relieve muscle spasm, eliminate swelling to reduce symptoms, and help stabilize the affected vertebrae after manipulative treatment. This method can be used to apply hot towels and hot water bags locally externally, and it is best to use herbal fumigation formula for hot compresses. Acute stage patients with heavy pain symptoms should not be warm compress treatment.
Self-exercise treatment.
Self-execution can be performed once a day. The technique should be lighter and heavier than you can tolerate. If you follow the procedure, you can usually see the effect in 1-2 months.
①Neck exercise: tilt your head forward ten times, tilt it backward ten times, tilt it to the left ten times, tilt it to the right ten times. Then slowly shake the head and turn it ten times to the left and ten times to the right.
②Shake the upper limbs: shake the left arm twenty times, and then shake the right arm twenty times.
③ grasp the air to practice finger; two arms flat out, both hands five fingers for flexion and extension movement, can be made fifty times cervical spondylosis.
④Local massage: you can look for pressure pain points, hard knot points or muscle tautness near the neck, large vertebrae points and Fengchi points, and knead and push pinch on these reaction points.
⑤ distal points: find pressure and pain points on the back of the hand, back of the foot, the front and outer side of the small hip, and the outer side of the calf. Apply point massage on this response point.
(6) rubbing palms and waist: rub the palms of both hands together, then rub the waist with both hands, up and down, for fifty times.
(7) pinch the ankle tendon: the two hands alternately pinch the ankle tendon.
(8) pinch and knead the man center point with the thumb and forefinger.
⑨Two ears: pull both ears with your hands and then rub them until they are hot.
Precautions
The precautions for cervical spondylosis at work are
1, cervical spondylosis patients need to change the head and neck position regularly, pay attention to rest and combine work and rest. Lift the head and gently move the neck in all directions, do not always let the cervical vertebrae in a bent state. The work should not last for a long time, more than 2 hours of continuous low work, it is difficult to make the high pressure in the cervical intervertebral space in a short period of time to get effective recovery relief, which will aggravate and accelerate the degeneration of the cervical spine.
2, patients who already have cervical spondylosis symptoms should reduce their workload and take appropriate rest. Those with heavy symptoms and frequent attacks should stop working and take absolute rest, and, preferably, be able to rest in bed. In this way, during the treatment of cervical spondylosis, it helps to improve the effect of treatment and promote the early relief of the disease and the early recovery of the body.
3, cervical spondylosis patients in the work should avoid prolonged blowing air conditioning, electric fans. As the onset of cervical spondylosis is the result of a combination of factors, cold and humidity tend to aggravate the symptoms of cervical spondylosis. You should try to reduce the amount of time you spend working with your head down for long periods of time in cold and humid conditions to prevent the appearance of cervical spondylosis symptoms or cervical spondylosis-induced neck and shoulder back pain.
4, cervical spondylosis patients should avoid participating in heavy physical labor, extracting heavy objects and so on, and should usually pay attention to protecting the neck to prevent its injury. The upper limbs should avoid extracting heavy objects, when the upper limbs carry heavy objects, the force can be transferred to the cervical spine through the muscles of the suspended upper limbs, thus causing the cervical spine to be stretched and increasing the mutual pressure between the cervical spine. The symptoms of cervical spondylosis may be aggravated after the patient participates in heavy physical work.