Thank you for joining me again this evening for our nightly podcasts. I perform these podcasts in the hopes that you will be able to education yourself on the topics discussed so you can make better informed medical decisions regarding your health in the future. I am doctor Harrison Campbell of Restoration Health a premier sugar land chiropractors office. Previously we discussed diets and what the most important aspect to consider when starting one. Tonight, we will be discussing the pelvis in great detail.
The pelvis as sugar land chiropractors can tell you is composed of three bones. There is the sacrum and which connects to an illium on each side. These illii circle around and join together at a joint. Where the sacrum and the illium connect is a joint called the sacro iliac joint. Where the illium conjoin is a joint called the symphysis pubis.
Now the symphysis pubis is in the anterior or front side of the body, and is a body ridge you can feel if you palpate or press down where your bladder would be. This joint is conjoined by tough fibrocartilage and has very little motion associated with it. Very rarely is this joint injured in most people, but when an injury occurs it can be very painful. For sugar land chiropractors there are a few adjustments which can be done to this joint, but typically as there is no problem adjustments being performed are incredibly rare.
The sacroiliac joints are one of the few joint in the body which do not possess a joint capsule. Now to most people this has little meaning. For sugar land chiropractors what this means is there is no synovial fluid, meaning joint fluid, and the joint is held together by ligaments only. Now we will focus mostly on the sacroiliac joints for this discussion again as the symphysis pubis is very rarely involved with anything. These sacroiliac joints rock anterior and posterior as we walk. When the leg are swinging forward, the illium on that side rocks backwards. When we push off with the leg, the illium rocks forward.
The purpose for this illium rocking is to clear or open the hip joint as we move. Remember when we discussed the shoulder as a ball and socket joint? Well the hip is also a ball and socket joint. Unlike the shoulder however, the hip is extremely stable, it has to be as it supports our body weight. The outcome of having this stable joint is we have a joint which does not have a lot of motion. Therefore the illium rocks to give that extra bit of motion to the hip joint.
Now the most common injury sugar land chiropractors see with the pelvis is a condition called posterior illium. What this means is that one of the illium has rocked backwards. This produces a pain over the sacroiliac joint which can travel down over the glute and the posterior portion of the thigh in some cases. It can also present with pain when moving from a seated to standing position or returning to a seating position from a standing position.
A condition which women suffer from while pregnant is low back pain. This pain can be attributed to the sacro iliac joints or more specifically the ligaments which connect the illium to the sacrum. When women are pregnant there is a hormone in the body which causes ligaments to relax. For sugar land chiropractors this hormone is called relaxin. The purpose of this hormone is to help the ligaments of the symphysis pubis to stretch to allow for child birth. Unfortunately hormones do no target one area specifically. This leaves all of the ligaments to relax and stretch. For a joint like the sacro iliac joints which are help together by only ligaments this creates problems.
This is where the chronic low back pain suffered during pregnancy originates. Yes, having the additional weight from the pregnancy adds pressure to the lumbar spine, but this alone would not be enough to generate pain. If you combine the relaxin targeting the ligaments to allow for increases in flexibility combined with the additional weight, you get added stress on the sacro iliac joint and the lumbar spine with less support than normal. Thus, pain presents as there is joint dysfunction.
The posterior illuim we discussed before is a condition which is typically more common in men. This is do to us carrying our wallets in our back pocket. The original cause of this condition use to be attributed to truck drivers and cans of chewing tobacco. The can would be placed in the back pocket and sat upon. As sugar land chiropractors can tell you this creates a wedge which the person is sitting on, unbalancing the hips. There are two condition which can result from this. There is the posterior illium with the pelvis being wedged up creating this condition. There is also the piriformis syndrome where the can of tobacco or the wallet compresses the piriformis which irritates the sciatic nerve running through the muscle. This create radicular or neurological pain down the legs to usually the knee.
I do hope you enjoyed this over view of the pelvis. To recap, there are three bones which form the pelvis. There is the sacrum and the illii on each side. The three joints created are the two sacro iliac joint and the symphysis pubis. Each of these joints is held together almost exclusively by ligaments. We then covered a few conditions which can create problems in the sacro iliac joints as the symphysis pubis is rarely a problem.
Thank you for joining me again this evening for another great podcast. I hope you enjoyed the discussion on the pelvis and the anatomy associated with this area. As always should you or someone you know require a sugar land chiropractors services or simply have more questions on what was discussed please call Restoration Health today. We would love to schedule you an appointment and get you on the path to better health today. Thank you once again for joining us. Have a good night.