Neurologic & Orthopedic Hospital of Chicago: Is it just arthritis?
Everyone gets arthritis, at least on pictures. Arthritis basically means wear and tear (also known as degeneration) in the joints. Just like everyone will get at least a little grey, get a few skin wrinkles, and maybe even lose some hair (luckily the picture of me posted is a bit old J, but you can look at Dr. Cerullo’s picture), everyone, usually by the age of 40, will start to show some arthritis on x-rays, MRI scans, or other studies. Luckily, most of the time the changes on the pictures don’t cause pain or any other problems, and there is nothing that needs to be done. On the pictures, the arthritis in the spine shows up in a number of ways: the discs can bulge out of place, other joints, called facet joints, can get bigger, the ligaments (kind of like rubber bands that hold the bones together) get bigger as well, and sometimes get a little weak, which can cause the bones to slip a little(since everything needs a long medical name, we call slippage of the bones spondylolisthesis).
