What is a "Lumbar Facet"?

Between the bones of the lumbar spine (the vertebrae) there are three joints:

1. A disc joint that is a sort of shock absorber.
2. Two facet joints.

On either side, between the disc joint and the facet joint lies the foramen where the nerve exits from the spine. That's where the drama begins.

Help for sciatica pain

These are the facet joints, fairly healthy ones. They control how far you can bend and twist your spine. In particular they determine how far you can extend your spine. Those girls have healthy facets! Extension - backward bending - doesn't cause pain obviously. But if and when they pinch the nerve there is help for sciatica pain.

Here you can see the relation between the facet on one side, the foramen with its nerve, and the disc...

What is Arthropathy?

We quacks like to use big words to impress you! Like "lumbago". Sounds impressive. It's just "sore back" in Latin, nothing more!

Try breaking big medical words down into their constituent parts:

Arthr-opathy

• Arthr simply means to do with a joint and is the root of the word arthritis. Arthr-itis. An itis (inflammation) of an arthr (joint)
• opathy simply means "a condition of". Sometimes if we want to sound really impressive and scare you we would say "a disease of". Don't be frightened of that word "dis-ease". It simply means a "lack of ease."

So, arthropathy simply means a condition to do with a joint. In this instance, a lumbar facet joint causing lower back pain and possibly leg pain.

So lumbar facet arthropathy is simply a condition  of the lumbar facets; some would call it a disease.

Mostly, it's an osis not an itis. It's essentially non inflammatory, so taking NSAIDs certainly won't help. in the other hand lumbar facet arthritis may be inflammatory, but even then we chiropractors are not in favour of Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drugs except perhaps for a very short period for severe pain as they have such nasty side effects. 

Sometimes an arthropathy may become highly inflammatory; like, gout, America's fastest growing disease. Hospitalisations have increased by 400 percent in the last 20 years. Whilst this remains unproven it's most likely since the change from butter to margarine and omega 6 rich seed oils in the mid seventies.

There are other less common inflammatory arthritides caused by example by bowel disease; avoid all wheat products if you have colitis. Joint infections, diabetes and a particularly nasty one where the nerve to a joint becomes inflamed can all affect the mechanical parts of the body.

But most lumbar facet arthropathy is non inflammatory. In one sense it's a normal part of aging; like grey hair. As the facets joints get older wear and tear sets in, and they get thicker. Extension of the spine gradually becomes more limited.

Lumbar facet arthropathy

Nope, this is not a porn page. There are some very strange people in this world. Like my cousin who sent me this picture, and then said that, if I blog it, then I'm a dirty old man. Hmph. Maybe, but anyway I couldn't resist it.

Then I got to wondering whether you get dirty old women?

What these pretty young women do display is a healthy lordosis; that's the curve in the lower back, seen from the side. These are quite normal. When you have lumbar facet arthropathy, you wouldn't be able to lie like that. It would give you lumbago and perhaps also pain radiating down the leg; the part the lower limb affected depends on which nerve is pinched.

The sciatic nerve comes from the lower lumbar spine and travels down the back of the thigh, outer calf and the foot.

The femoral from the mid to upper lumbars passes to the front of the thigh and inner lower leg.

What is a lordosis?

Viewed from the side, the spine has three normal primary curves. Two of them, in the neck and lower back, are called a lordosis. It is concave posteriorally. Absence of this curve is always potentially serious.