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With Thanksgiving just around the corner, the holiday season will soon be in full swing. Of course, this time of the year brings with it many celebrations – and many temptations to drift into unhealthy habits. This can be a particularly bad situation for chronic back pain sufferers, but Laser Spine Institute is pleased to offer you some advice for good nutrition throughout the holidays that can help you manage not only your back pain, but also your overall health and well-being.

The holidays are a particularly tough time to keep up with your exercise program. The weather is getting chilly, which makes you want to snuggle up indoors. There are family and friends making demands on your time that could otherwise be spent in the gym and, above all else, there are countless meals and holiday parties threatening to overload you with excess calories.

Wanda Bogus, of Lexington, Alabama, enjoyed an active lifestyle full of early morning walks, working out, cooking and cleaning around the house, helping with a Sunday school class, and spending time with her family and grandchildren. But when burning pain down her right leg due to bone spurs and sciatica threatened to take away her normal lifestyle, she turned to Laser Spine Institute – and her faith – to regain her life without pain.

Who Gets Spinal Arthritis and Why?

Arthritis is a term that describes a number of different diseases that can result in pain, swelling, stiffness, and tenderness of the joints. The Arthritis Foundation suggests that some of the most common forms of this condition include osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and ankylosing spondylitis.

For the millions of people affected by arthritis, this condition can be difficult to manage, especially when it occurs in the spinal joints. These joints, like any other joint in your body, have a protective layer of cartilage that can wear out over time, causing the bones to rub against one another. This bone-on-bone friction can result in inflammation and pain, as well as lost flexibility, bone spurs, irritated nerves, back pain, spinal stenosis, and sciatica.

Linda Ross, a yoga enthusiast and instructor, led a healthy lifestyle from her earliest days.  An avid athlete her entire life, she enjoyed exercise, aerobics, fitness instruction, and competitive sports such as figure skating.  This amount of physical activity required Linda to have a strong core and a healthy spine, and she always stayed in top physical condition. However, that wasn't enough to prevent the onset of degenerative disc disease and chronic back pain.

Over the years, Linda began experiencing increasingly severe pain in her lower back, hips, legs, and feet due to a number of degenerative spine conditions, including spinal arthritis, degenerative disc disease, foraminal stenosis, bulging/herniated discs, spondylolisthesis, and radiculopathy.  At first, she tried a number of conservative treatment methods, such as massage, physical therapy, icing, heat, pain medication, exercise, and stretching.  Finding little relief from these methods, Linda even considered open back surgery before discovering Laser Spine Institute.