Ask a PT Response: "This was a very interesting question. I have seen patients both younger and older than yourself who have had conditions similiar to yours, so I was unsure of the answer. After doing a literature review I came acrossed a published study "Aging of the Cervical Spine in Healthy Volunteers: A 10 Year Longitudinal Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study" by Okada et al. which may answer your question. In their study they sampled 229 individuals with mean age of 39 (plus and minus 15 years) and examined a MRI of their spine 10 years ago with one currently and found that progression of degeneration of cervical spine on MRI was frequently observed during 10 year period, with development of symptoms in 34% of subjects. I guess to answer your question, from this study it wouldn't be uncommon to have these cervical degenerative changes occur in about 1/3 of the population in the aforementioned age group. I hope this helps and thanks for using CyberPT."