0:00
Hello.
My name's Alison McGregor.
I'm a professor of Musculoskeletal
Biodynamics at Imperial College,
London, and I've been asked to
talk to you today about lower
back pain and the composite
of its interacting systems
and how they work.
0:14
Just to give an overview of what
I'm going to tell you about, first
of all, I want to allude to
different aspects of structure and
function, and how they interlink.
And I then want to explain
how some of these links
are made through different
modelling, and theories, and ideas.
And hopefully by the
end of this, you'll
see that it's not quite
as straightforward
as we may have thought.
0:35
Normal function has actually
been described as a composite
of three different systems.
We have a skeletal system,
which, to you and I,
are the bones of skeleton, a
muscular system, which is, not
surprisingly, the muscles
that make your joints work,
but also a higher center, a
control system, which is the brain.
And hopefully by the
end of this talk,
you'll see how these three systems
have to work together to allow us
to have normal function,
and when they don't work,
it's been postulated
that you get some level
of dysfunctional, structural
compensation in the body.
1:07
First of all though, I'd like to
talk through the skeletal system.
1:12
If we think with
the spine initially,
we know it's the central
core of the body,
and from which our upper limb,
our head, and our lower limbs
are attached to.
We know it's got a
very complex structure
of muscles surrounding
it, and it has very
many discrete roles in the body.
But what you may not know is if
you actually dissect the spine,
and take away all those muscles,
it actually buckles which just 2
kilograms of load going through it.
1:37
So that then begs the question,
how does the spine function?
