The word ‘spine’ actually has origins from an earlier word that meant ‘thorn’. Hippocrates was a physician in Ancient Greece. Approximately 400 B.C., he was possibly the first to detail the pathology and anatomy of the human body’s spinal column. He also made the earliest instruments to deal with painful and displaced vertebrae, which included the Hippocratic board and the Hippocratic ladder. The spine in a crucially protective bony structure found inside your body, but it’s far from the only one. It gives protection to your spinal cord, whereas your brain is protected by your skull, and your heart and lungs are protected by your ribcage. Steel weighs roughly four to five times as heavy as bone, but human bones are, believe it or not, stronger than certain kinds of steel.
Humans have 33 different vertebrae, as do most animals. That number doesn’t include bones that tailed animals have known as caudal vertebrae, which have as many as 50 bones alone. Notable exceptions to the 33 vertebrae standard include manatees and sloths, who might have a handful more or less, compared to most animals. Giraffes, despite their height, only have seven cervical vertebrae for their long necks! A quarter of your overall spine is cartilage, which is necessary for both shock absorption and flexibility. For instance, if your vertebrae didn’t have the disc padding that’s in between each one, then your head would take quite a rough ride whenever you walked quickly.
Wearing any high heels can misalign your spine, resulting an abnormal tilts in both your lower and upper back. Chronic use of them can result in back conditions possibly needing medical treatment.
Your spinal cord is roughly half-an-inch thick near your neck, but as you go down your back, it gets slowly more narrow, down to a quarter of an inch. The spinal cord is fragile, and it relies in its surrounding vertebrae to protect it.
If your spinal bones get injured, they can regenerate. However, the spinal cord is not able to do this.
Cocaine and heroin were both commonly prescribed painkillers by physicians as late as the 1950s when it was realized just how dangerous such drugs are.
Of all sorts of pains reported by American adults, low back pain is the most common complaint.
When back injuries are common, programs to teach prevention techniques speed up recovery time by 300 percent or more.
