Laurie's Blogs.

Did you happen to watch my video on Fatty Epaxials?  If not, you can see it here: https://youtu.be/FcsOMZNq7sA  

My new friend from the IAVRPT Symposium this summer, Jenny Coates, passed along some human information on fatty epaxials from a reputable source… turns out, my theory on why skinny dogs get the fatty epaxials is a pretty solid theory!  Check this out!

The take home points based on numerous papers:

1.  Size and composition of muscles tells us about the health of paraspinal muscles in people.

2.  Fat seems to infiltrate atrophied muscles.

3.  Fat tissue is non-contractile and subsequently leads to decreased muscle function with lowered fatigue resistance.

4.  Paraspinal fatty infiltrate is associated with low back pain, level of disability, and muscle dysfunction

So, we know that exercise is good.  (If you don’t know this yet, then you should call a friend.  Chances are you are strapped under a rock!)  Can exercise reverse the phenomenon of Fatty Epaxials!

A recent systematic review took on the challenge of compiling data to learn more.  The researchers looked at two RCTs, one non-RCT, and three single-arm studies.

And???

Sadly, the authors found moderate quality evidence that paraspinal fatty infiltration is NOT reversible by means of exercise in people with low back pain.

However, there is a caveat:

As a limitation the examined exercise interventions included short treatment periods ranging from 8 to 16 weeks and it remains questionable whether an exercise and follow-up period of 8–16 weeks is sufficient to expect a decrease in fatty infiltration levels in people with low back pain.  Additionally, only two of the six papers reported adherence to the exercise intervention.

Thoughts?

Maybe there’s a chance that “Long-Term” exercise can be of benefit.

Maybe we are better off to prevent the “fatty situation” by addressing back pain sooner than later.

Maybe our fatty epaxial dogs need overall general conditioning, because the epaxials are quite likely an outward expression of a more systemic issue.

There you go!  

We all learned something this week!

Have a good one!

Cheers,  Laurie

REFERENCE:

Physio Meets Science Facebook Post  -  https://bit.ly/PhysioScienceFatEpaxials