I just got the results of a cervical spine MRI and one of the issues that was in the result was Modic Type 1 endplate changes. When I read about it inflammation was indicated as a cause and I wondered about the high post prandials I’ve had for years that went undiagnosed. Do diabetics have, in general, more issues with illnesses connected to inflammation and specifically spinal disease? I was also an undiagnosed celiac for 35 years so my bones are thin from that so I seemed to be doomed to have to deal with this kind of issue as I age
I know that high blood sugars are causative with inflammation, and I know that inflammation is present in every disease. In fact, I think it is one of the markers for most of diseases. And, of course, any type of autoimmune condition causes inflammation.
I use systemic enzymes and turmeric/curcumin as preventative anti-inflammatories… but I think the most effective treatment I’ve found to deal with inflammation is to keep my blood sugars stable and under 140. I also use Low Dose Naltrextone to reduce thyroid antibodies, and it has helped as well.
The serious spinal problems I live with are not at all related to inflammation, which I don’t have. But higher blood glucose causes deterioration in tissues that have marginal blood supplies, which includes discs and tendons. So discs rupture, and after that happens, you get bone on bone, over time, the orthopedic surgeon told me, the bones begin to fuse together.
If you have an inflammatory, autoimmune diabetes you also get inflammation eroding the joints, but it isn’t necessary.
And the sugar level where this starts is prediabetic. That is why frozen shoulder predicts a diabetes diagnosis ten years before it happens. “Crispy tendons” is how it was described to me, which also have limited blood supplies.
There is some mention of the relationship of blood sugar and degenerative disc disease in an excellent book, Sciatica Solutions.
