Apart from the nerves what makes spinal injuries so difficult to heal?
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Its really all in the nerves, they have an extremely poor ability to regenerate, 1-3mm/day at best, central nerves like brain and spinal cord are even less likely to hit that rate, and they often fail to reconnect. The best option for the body is to adapt around it, neuroplasticity, but that happens in the brain and not the spinal cord ( as best I know)
For people with two feet, there is a backbone or spine holding up your body. That means it does a lot of work and will take more forces. So please try not to hurt your spine.
While the obvious one is the bunch of nerves, there is the physical structural part of the spine.
The spine is also made of vertebrae, tendons, ligaments, and cartilage. All supporting a large amount of nerves. All of these are working together to keep the body supported, as well as balance a 10lb head stuck on top. While doing this, it also needs to remain flexible.
So even if the cord itself is not damaged, many people develop backpain due lifestyle, fitness levels, injuries or just straight up bad luck.
The central nervous system has an immune system isolated from the rest of your body. This is because the normal response to damage in the body messes up the nerves even more.
So when a spinal injury happens, body immune cells rush into the injury and do their job thinking they’re helping but royally screw up the nerve healing. The vast majority of the damage from spinal injury is caused by this effect. You can prevent spinal damage by injecting particular substances to impede the body immune system from ruining the place with good intentions.
However, the window for these treatments is to get injection directly into the injury without piercing the spine in five minutes from the injury… thus not viable for real life.
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