ABOUT THE SPINE - Dr. John Raymond Baker,DC

The spine is a fascinating structure. It houses the spinal cord and directs it down the center of the back, and acts as a conduit and protective structure.

The spine is not just a dead piece of bone surrounding the nervous tissues of the spine, but is instead, an integrated, dynamic, and vital structure that responds to its environment.

One example of the way in which a spine responds to the forces upon it, involves Wolff's law.

From Wikipedia's entry on Wolff's Law :
"Wolff's law is a theory developed by the German Anatomist/Surgeon Julius Wolff (1835-1902) in the 19th century that states that bone in a healthy person or animal will adapt to the loads it is placed under. If loading on a particular bone increases, the bone will remodel itself over time to become stronger to resist that sort of loading. The converse is true as well: if the loading on a bone decreases, the bone will become weaker due to turnover as it is less metabolically costly to maintain and there is no stimulus for continued remodeling that is required to maintain bone mass."

Now, more to the point for most people, if you have poor biomechanics, and you sustain excessive or improper wear and tear, you may develop "osteoarthritis", which is basically,
a wear and tear disease. In osteoarthritis, one thing that happens is that the discs (intervertebral structures composed of an inner gel substance called the "nucleus pulposus" and an outer part with crosshatched fibers called the "annulus fibrosus") because of excessive wear and tear, begin to dry out, and as the fibers dessicate and age, the disc is less able to hold water.

Water is to an intervertebral disc, as air is to a car tire. As the hydraulic content of the disc decreases, the "plumpiness" begins to disappear and as the disc sags, the sidewalls, start to pooch outward, causing a bulge at a minor stage, and a herniation as the deterioration decreases.

As this occurs, the body perceives the increased stress on the vertebrae and may produce shelves or "spurs" projecting from the bones, to dissipate the force. Thus, this is but one way the body responds to added stress/