The Forgotten Facet Joints – Lower Back Pain

Do you have back problems coming from a facet joints? Have you been told that you have a facet joint problem? Maybe one like facet arthropathy, or arthritis in the facet joints? There’s also degenerative joint disease of the facets. Any of those problems can relate to a joint problem in the lumbar spine.

What I’m going to do today for you is explain exactly what that is a facet joint problem and all those different ones. And I’ll show you on the back what that looks like inside the body. And then we’ll talk about what you can do, what options there are for you, because this is a fixable problem in over 90% of the cases.

But real quick, my name is Dr. David Middaugh, and I’m a specialist physical therapist, I’ve been helping people with back problems for years. I’ve been producing videos for the internet so that people can get help by just watching our videos. And then of course, we’ve also got a clinic in El Paso called El Paso Manual Physical Therapy, where we help out people in person.

Well let me tell you about a facet joint, they have different names, they are also called zeigapothekeseal joints. I know that was a mouthful in the medical field, they might use z-joints for short for facet joints are probably the most common way that you’ll hear it. But what it is in the spine, you have a pair of facet joints at every single level in the spine all the way up to the to the top of the spine. But down here in the back. It’s the connection on the backside between one bone and another.

So right here, right where I’m trying to get my nail in there, there’s a crease between the two surfaces of the of the joints that have the bones, that’s where the joint is, and you have another one right there. And so you have pairs of these at every single join the spine. And these are forgotten joints often, because nobody really pays attention to them as much in the medical field. Anyway, everybody is focused on these discs on the front.

And I think the reason why they focus on them so much, because that’s where a lot of the problems show up on an X ray or an MRI, they don’t really show up as much because they’re not as big relative the centroids aren’t as big relative to the discs. But you do see facet joint problems. And really, I’d venture to say that that’s more important at addressing than a disc problem.

Because if you can address the problems in the facet joints, usually disc problems get better. And the reason for that is because there’s way more movements that can occur at a facet joint compared to a disjoint.

Now, if you think of it in mechanical terms, because this is a very mechanical part of the body discs, the discs between the bones are more like the spring, a spring if you think like a shock absorber in a car, or like a slinky even this think He’s way too loose think of more of a stiff spring. A good example is if you’ve ever taken a part of pen, like a retractable pen, a retractable pen, the one that you can click, and there’s a little spring inside, that spring wants to maintain its straight position, and you can compress it and it’ll spring back up, you can bend it one way or the other way, it’ll come back up to the middle.

That’s kind of what discs do in the spine, they like to maintain their position, the facet joints slide with each other their flat surfaces back here. So there if we make a bigger, it’s kind of like this, and they move on each other like that. But they’re tiny. They’re like the size of the pads of your fingers here. They’re really small relative, so it’s more like that. And there’s a lot more sliding motion that happens compared to like a disc in the front desk in the front is just kind of racking these kinds of forces right here.

So if you’ve got a facet joint problem, like an arthroscopy or an arthritis arthropathy just means joint disease, and then they use another synonymous term, similar term called degenerative joint disease of the spine. They’re usually talking about these four facet joints. And then arthritis, osteoarthritis specifically means that the joint itself is changing, there’s cartilage loss, because there’s cartilage surfaces in there.

In order for the joint to slide, you have a layer of cartilage on each side of the bone, because it’s slick, and allows for easy movement to occur. But if that, if the forces within that joint are too much, over time you wear down that cartilage or you begin to lose the slickness of the cartilage, and then they can get stuck and can cause problems at that joint or in another area because all these joints are like a chain of joints.

So if one gets affected, another one nearby can begin to get affected. And if that one gets affected, then it keeps going up and down. It kind of spreads from there. But it’s just because it’s a chain of joints, not necessarily because it’s a disease that you catch, and it’s you know, contagious it’s just that’s the way arthritis works is it one joint gets affected and it affects the other one and the other one the other one over time.

What can happen in the short term out of a facet joint If you’ve got some compression going on in there, the cartilage surfaces within the joint can get squeezed. Because those joints are supposed to be slick the cartilage supposed to be slick, it can lose its slickness and get stuck. And then people that have ever had that my back went out sensation where they are doing something and then all of a sudden, they, they can’t move and they have to sit down or they even fall down.

That happened to me once I fell down flat on my stomach, after my back went out that facet joint is what gets stuck. And it might even pinch some of the tissues in there. And it causes the muscles around, they’re the ones that run up and down the back to spasm in order to hold the joint for moving more and further injury itself.

In order for that situation resolved, we need to allow more motion to happen in the joint. And so doing certain exercises or getting certain treatment from a person like me, a specialist physical therapist can help to free up the motion in there, so that those muscles can unspecific them and we can be unstuck and get back to life as usual. If that keeps happening over time, or happens in a lower grade, or maybe your back doesn’t go out.

But if you feel discomfort and pain, a penis back there, as people age and get it get over 50 into the 60s and 70s. And beyond, then arthritis can begin to develop because of too much forces going through those facade joints, too much inappropriate forces going through those facet joints, it changes the surfaces, and they just don’t they respond by getting thicker in some areas, losing cartilage and others.

But the reality is, joints are designed to take pressure, good pressures that they’re built for. But if you’ve got a muscle imbalance, or you’ve got some other conditions, some injuries, some big injury from before, then the forces that the facet joint is designed to normally take can change, and they can begin to alter the joint itself. And that’s what can cause that facet arthropathy, the Arthritis and of course the degenerative joint disease in the back over time that can compress nerves and begin to affect a bunch of other things. And going back to your diagnosis.

If you’ve ever seen a health care professional, chances are they haven’t talked too much about the facet joints. Because we don’t really know as a as a profession at large, how well they move how much they move what direction they move. That’s actually something that is a very specialist bit of knowledge that that we as male therapists generally have a good idea on and can fix for patients. And then what muscles and exercises to do is important to nail down so that you can begin to get better movements in the facet joints.

If you’ve been diagnosed with a facet joint problem like a facet arthropathy for facet arthritis degenerative joint disease in your facet. And you’re thinking that we might be able to help you out with your back issue, the best thing to do is to go to the top of our website here and find the cost and availability button. Leave us your details there when my staff will call you back so that we can have a discussion with you about your back issue.

We want to know all that we can over the phone about your back problem so that we can let you know what the next steps are if we can really help you out. When it comes to back problems. This is one of the most common things that we see is lack of motion in those facet joints. And we’re excellent at freeing up the motion by hand as well as giving the right exercises to maintain that motion for the long term so that that cartilage can rehydrate and become slick and move normal again.

And so the pressures are normalized in those joints as well as the discs, discs, and so any muscle imbalances are addressed so that long term relief can be achieved. And arthritis can be stopped and possibly even reversed, and your back can be healthy and avoid surgeries. Avoid injections and medications. I hope that we can be a part of your success story real soon. Have a wonderful day.