Physiotherapists in Golders Green treat many different conditions including the issues profiled below.

The Upper Neck

The upper neck or cervical spine is specialised in its anatomy and function as it has to bear the weight of the head and allow the head to be moved into any position for our sensory organs to receive the information they need. The two upper vertebrae, the atlas and the axis, have a specialised anatomical structure which is designed to satisfy the needs of head positioning in many functions. The upper vertebra, the atlas, has no body and is a bony ring with large facet joints to articulate with the facet joints of the lowest part of the skull, the occiput.

The second vertebra, the axis, has .captured. the body part of the vertebra above and has a upwardly protruding pin called the dens (latin for tooth) which forms a joint with part of the atlas above and also with a ligament which runs round it. The integrity of this joint is very important and if the dens is fractured or the ligament becomes slack then there can be a risk of damage to the spinal cord with death or quadriplegia. For this reason in any patient who may have suffered head or neck trauma the dens is x-rayed and checked carefully.

The Structure of Bone

Bone is one of the body.s connective tissue and its cells produce a firm and rigid framework to make the skeleton of the body. It has a good blood supply and is surrounded by nerve endings which are mostly in the soft tissues which enclose the bone. Two types of bone exist, cortical bone which exists in solid masses or sheets and trabecular bone which is a lattice like honeycomb of small bone struts. The mass of bone secreted is five to eight percent water and 60-70 percent Hydroxyapatite, which is composed mostly of calcium and phosphate. The rest of the bone is made up of collagen, a form of fibrous tissue.

The crystals of Hydroxyapatite mean that bone is hard and can withstand compressive stresses while the fibrous tissue reduced the brittleness and resists tension stresses. Bone is laid down in an arrangement of concentric cylinders with a central channel carrying the blood vessels and nerves. The osteocytes or bone maintaining cells lie between the layers of bone. The whole unit of the individual cylinder is known as a Haversian system or an osteon. The periosteum covers the outer surface of the bone, with a tougher outer layer and a cellular inner layer.