Today is World Dance Day.
In recent years, dance has become a popular choice for children to increase their talents. However, due to the uneven professionalism of the teachers in extracurricular classes, some interest classes allow children to carry out many "flexible stretching" movements with potential safety hazards in order to demonstrate their "professionalism".
For example, there was a hot search event before that was "a 5-year-old girl was disabled from her lower waist while practicing dancing":
Image source: Weibo screenshot
What's even more worrying is that the incident of "serious injury to the lower back" or even lifelong disability is not unique.
Taking the opportunity of World Dance Day, Science China would like to talk about the harm of "lower back" to young children from a medical perspective, and how to protect children's relatively fragile limbs and avoid dangerous movements in other scenarios.
Whether your child is learning dance or is about to learn dance, you should read today's article carefully and forward it to your friends in need.
You must also remind your relatives and friends around you: it is a good thing to let your child exercise, but it must conform to the objective law of physical development, and do not make a big mistake and ruin your child's life!
The "lower waist" that is common in dance
Why for children
Huge potential hazards?
With the popularization of quality education, more and more parents have begun to pay attention to the development of their children's physical fitness. In order for their children to be tall and have outstanding temperament, many parents choose dance in many children's training.
But behind such a popular choice, there are hidden risks that are not easy to detect.
This is a data analysis of pediatric spinal cord injury patients conducted by the China Rehabilitation Research Center from 2015 to 2019:
From the table, it is not difficult to see that the number of children with spinal cord injuries caused by dance lower back movements is on the rise.
Parents need to be vigilant that spinal cord injury is a serious and disabling disease with poor recovery and can have a huge impact on the lives and families of their children.
Why is it that the "lower back" movement is so risky for children?
First of all, children have good flexibility, but lack stability
Let's start by looking at the anatomy of the spine:
Our spine is made up of 7 cervical vertebrae, 12 thoracic vertebrae, 5 lumbar vertebrae, and sacrum and coccyx. The spinal canal of the spine contains the nerves of the spinal cord. These vertebrae are like different segments on a piece of bamboo, moving in small sections and connecting them in series to produce large movements.
Diagram of the spine anatomy of the spine of the average adult
During movement, the spinal cord also slides along with the movement of the spine. The cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine all have a safe range of motion. However, if the movement is too far from the safe range, it can cause serious damage to the joints, ligaments and even nerves of the spine.
Children's spine, unlike adults, has the following spinal characteristics:
Changes in the morphology of the spine from prenatal to adulthood
We can see that the child is born flexed, and after the age of 4, the morphology of the spine begins to change, and at the age of 6-7 years it will form a physiological curvature close to that of an adult: cervical lordosis, thoracic kyphosis, lumbar lordosis.
Because children's bones have more cartilage, water and organic matter (collagen), and less inorganic salts (calcium phosphate, carbonate), children's bones are elastic and have a large range of motion, but the child's own muscle content is insufficient, so children have better flexibility but insufficient stability.
Secondly, the lower back movement will significantly increase the pressure on the joints of the spine
Let's analyze the movement of the lower back, please observe two pictures in detail:
The picture on the left shows the spine in a normal standing position, with cervical curvature slightly forward, thoracic curvature backward, and lumbar curvature forward.
The picture on the right shows the lower back movement, you can see that the entire spine is folded backwards to a large extent, the thoracic spine and lumbar spine show a great degree of ventral reverse arch, and the pressure on each joint of the spine increases significantly. In particular, the thoracic vertebrae, which should have been curvature backwards, are now folded into the anterior reverse arch.
Therefore, if the lower back movement is not operated properly, the following injuries may be caused:
1. The thoracic spine is extremely hyperextended when the child is lower lumbar, resulting in 50% spinal stenosis, which squeezes the spinal cord to a certain extent, and spinal cord ischemic injury may occur.
2. The thoracic spine is stretched longitudinally during posterior extension, and the intervertebral pressure increases significantly, resulting in local tissue damage.
3. The thoracic spine is stretched longitudinally during the posterior extension movement, and the spinal cord is also stretched accordingly, because the compliance of the spinal cord in children is much smaller than that of the spine, when the critical value is reached, it can cause damage to the blood vessels entering the spinal cord, resulting in spinal cord injury.
Excessive longitudinal stretching, causing the spinal cord to be stretched
After a partial spinal cord injury
Paralysis does not occur immediately
Early manifestations of injury tend to go unnoticed
The most common spinal cord injury caused by lower back maneuvers is non-fracture-dislocated spinal cord injury (SCIWORA), predominantly thoracic SCIWORA injury.
This injury can manifest as nervous system dysfunction and abnormal sensory and motor function of the lower extremities. In severe cases, the lower limbs are paralyzed and need to rely on a wheelchair to live.
After thoracic spinal cord injury, it is manifested by paresthesia in the skin of the lower limbs and abnormal motor function of the lower limbs
In the early stages of spinal cord injury, your child may experience soreness, numbness, chills in the lower back and legs, loss of consciousness, inability to stand and walk, and inability to urinate.
Parents should note that:
It has been reported that a subset of patients with SCIWORA do not develop paralysis immediately after trauma, but begin to develop paralysis 30 minutes to 4 days after trauma in the absence of significant further trauma. In some patients, the symptoms of paralysis even progressively worsen, eventually leading to the development of total spinal cord injury, which leads to a high rate of early misdiagnosis even if they go to the doctor.
The prognosis of SCIWORA is poor and is often accompanied by complications such as scoliosis, hip dislocation, and urinary problems. If a child does suffer from this disease, it can have a huge impact on the whole family.
Is it still possible to take a dance interest class?
Injuries to the lower back
Can it be prevented?
In order to prevent injuries caused by inappropriate "lower back" movements, parents must pay special attention to the following 6 points:
1
Select training institutions with professional competence
Judging from objective statistics, most of the children who suffer from spinal cord injury due to lower back come from economically underdeveloped areas. It may be speculated that it may be due to the lack of professional competence and risk awareness of teachers in the relevant local dance training institutions, which caused the damage.
At the same time, we also call on the relevant departments to strictly regulate the relevant institutions, and parents should also select high-quality training institutions.
2
It is necessary to assess the child's physical condition and whether it is suitable for special dance training
Each child's physical condition is different, so it is recommended to conduct a professional physical function assessment for the child before professional training, and choose appropriate special training to avoid major injuries.
图源@cottonbro,Pexels
3
The course arrangement is scientific and reasonable, and reasonable stretching is carried out
The curriculum is arranged in a step-by-step manner, scientifically rigorous, and no excessive and improper training is carried out. Scientific and reasonable warm-up exercises should be done before and after training. Before the age of 7-8, the strength of bones, bone scale and joint soft tissues is not very high, and it is generally recommended that after the age of 10, these tissues reach a certain strength and then go to higher intensity training, so that it can be more stable.
4
In addition to "flexibility", it is necessary to pay attention to children's stability training
Due to special physiological characteristics, children have good flexibility but insufficient stability. Pay attention to stability training, increase children's core strength, and improve the ability to protect the spine.
5
Raise your own and your child's risk awareness
Many parents sign up for dance classes for their children, but they blindly follow the trend, and they themselves have little understanding of dance specialization. Parents must never be ignorant of the risk of injury that may arise.
6
Pay attention to your child's emotions and "distress signals" after exercise
Children do not know enough about their own bodies, and due to their young age, lack of expressive ability, coupled with inexplicable pain, they are likely to have damage signals and cannot express clearly.
If parents lack relevant knowledge, it is easy to delay treatment and miss the best time for treatment if they blindly believe that "children are squeamish" and "cannot endure hardships".
Every time there is news about a child who is disabled in the lower back, I am very worried. It is so sad and sad that a child who is only five or six years old has to spend his whole life in a wheelchair. I hope that today's article can help you further understand the risk and severity of your child's "lower back" movement.
Regardless of whether the child is learning dance or not, we should pay attention to and understand the relevant knowledge. The more people who understand, the more people who know, the more people who discuss, the more people who discuss, the more tragedies that may occur.
We hope that you will pass this article on to your family and friends, and communicate with your family (including children) and friends to avoid the risk of injury to the greatest extent.
Children not only need to enjoy the fun and results of sports, but also should follow the scientific laws of development to exercise and train, do not rush and cause lifelong regrets!
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[2] Dowdell J, Mikhail C, Robinson J, etal. Anatomy of the pediatric spine and spine injuries in young athletes[J]. Annals of Joint, 2018(3):28.
[3] Ren J, Zeng G, Ma Y, etal. Pediatric thoracic SCIWORA after back bend during dance practice: a retrospective case series and analysis of trauma mechanisms[J]. Childs Nerv Syst . , 2017(33):1191-1198.
[4] Chatterje S, Vivekananda. Spinal injuries in children[J]. Spinal injuries in children, 2012(3).
[5] Liu Genlin, Zhou Hongjun et al. Characteristics of the causes of spinal cord injury in children[J]. Chinese Rehabilitation Theory & Practice, 2020, 26(4).
[6] Huang Yan, Lu Yinshan, Chen Hong. Research progress on spinal cord injury without fracture dislocation[J]. Chinese Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2019, 41(5).
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Source|Popular Science China Website - Guoke Parent-Child Guokr (id:guokr_kid)