If you’re struggling to get lasting relief from back pain or sciatica, I’m willing to bet that there is one thing that is keeping you “stuck” in pain…
And once you address this little talked about factor, you’ll finally get rid of the pain and be able to keep it away.
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Fixing a bulging or herniated disc means different things to different people. Usually it either means a) help me stop my back pain, or b) help me fix the herniated disc. The end result may be the same but the perspective is critical.
If you simply want to mask the back pain you could take one of the many non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, get repeated cortisone shots, or beg your doctor for another pharmaceutical drug alternative. While you might reach the perceived goal of ending back pain, you of course have not addressed the real problem.
On the other hand, if you choose to fix a herniated disc by actually treating the underlying cause as well as the symptoms you’ll have a greater likelihood of both ending the pain and preventing its recurrence. That’s where this article will focus.
First, understand that outside of cases of trauma a herniated disc does not occur overnight. It may seem like you “threw your back out” all at once, yet it was a process of weakening over time that allowed your disc to suddenly become noticeably problematic. What you may find surprising is many have a herniated disc without pain. It’s when the disc or inner material from a herniated disc press against a nerve that pain results.
Simply put, herniated discs are primarily caused by uneven pressure. Think of driving a car that’s out of alignment. The tires wear unevenly due to more pressure being present on one edge. Keep driving without fixing the problem and sooner or later you’ll experience a blowout on the worn side.
The effect on spinal discs is similar. Uneven pressure caused by muscle imbalances cause the less-pressured side of the disc to bulge or rupture, squirting the jellylike interior through the fibrous disc membrane into the spinal column. Picture stomping one end of a jelly donut – the jelly would be pushed out the other side.
There are of course other contributing factors like hydration, nutritional imbalances and excess stress and negative beliefs to name a few.
How to fix a herniated disc
Clearly the first step to fixing a herniated disc is to remove this uneven pressure. One highly effective method of removing spinal pressure you can do right at home is called spinal decompression.
By using an exercise ball or other device, negative pressure is used to pull the vertebrae towards the head instead of towards the feet. One of the most effective tools for achieving this effect is with an inversion table, which uses gravity to gently relieve disc pressure. This negative pressure has been known to allow a herniated disc to return to its normal position by itself.
Once you have relieved the initial pressure you will still need to address the underlying root cause of compression: muscle imbalances. Using a muscle balance therapy self assessment or consulting with a provider versed in this course of treatment you will identify specific muscle imbalances leading to uneven spinal pressure. Then you will use exercises targeted to strengthen weak muscles and stretches for overused and tight muscles to reverse these imbalances.
By relieving the pressure on the herniated disc and correcting the underlying muscle imbalances you will have either fixed the herniated disc or gone a long way towards improving the condition.
And don’t forget, you can’t ignore the other causes mentioned earlier. In order to get true lasting relief you have to find the combination of treatments that address all of your underlying causes.
TENS is back in the news again. TENS therapy is widely used to treat chronic lower back pain by sending electric currents to nerves from a pocket sized battery pack through electrodes attached to the skin (TENS stands for transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation).
The big news is the National Academy of Neurology no longer endorses the treatment. In their December 30th issue of Neurology discontinues their recommendation for TENS as treatment for chronic lower back pain. In fact, the study’s lead author, Dr. Dubinsky, is now on the record as saying “TENS was found to be of no benefit for people with chronic lower back pain.”
Naturally, mainstream media went wild with the story ever since with over 60 major news outlet stories written on it since. After all, we’re talking about four decades of wasted time and money for a lower back pain treatment that simply doesn’t work. Sorry boys, but you’re a little late to the party.
You see, the new study was simply a review of existing literature. We’ve known for years that TENS was no more effective at treating lower back pain than placebo. The real story ought to be how it took nearly a decade just to come out and say it doesn’t work. But we’ll save that rant for another day because if you or someone you love is suffering from chronic lower back pain you’re more interested in what DOES work.
Number one recommendation for treating chronic lower back pain is exercise. It is proven effective, free of side effects like pharmaceutical drugs, and doesn’t have to cost you a dime. The key to getting lower back pain relief from exercise is doing the right exercises. Most lower back pain is the result of muscle imbalances which can be effectively treated through stretching overly tight muscles and strengthening weak muscles through muscle balance therapy.
To get you started, here’s a quick stretch you can use right now for immediate lower back pain relief:
Spinal stenosis is the formal name for a narrowing of the spinal canal. While spinal stenosis can develop in the thoracic, or mid-back, it most commonly occurs in either the lumbar (lower back) or cervical (neck and upper back) regions of the spine.
As narrowing places pressure on the spinal cord and other nerves, mild to excruciating pain or even numbness in various areas of your neck, shoulders, back, arms, legs and buttocks results. Severe cases may even interfere with normal bladder and bowel functions.
Diagnosed primarily in older adults, many dismiss early signs of spinal stenosis as regular aches and pains of growing older. The good news is progression of spinal stenosis can often be slowed or even reversed.
What causes spinal stenosis
Spinal stenosis is most commonly attributed to osteoarthritis-related bone damage, but a number of other conditions may constrict the spinal canal including a herniated disc, scar tissue build up, inflammation or even a tumor. In fairly rare cases spinal stenosis can be caused genetically in which case it is already present at birth as opposed to acquired later in life.
Like most health conditions, spinal stenosis is best dealt with through prevention rather than corrective actions after diagnosis. Fortunately many of the preventative steps you can take can also help reduce symptoms of the condition and even relieve the constriction itself depending on the cause.
How to naturally treat — or prevent — spinal stenosis
If you already are experiencing pain from spinal stenosis, you will need to experiment to find what you can tolerate and what treatments work best for you. Surgery may become a a required option for some, but should rarely be necessary if you first use these symptomatic and condition helping natural therapies:
Heat therapy, or ice and heat together, can break the pain-spasm cycle. Saunas, hot tubs, or far infrared heat also help improve circulation to bring more healing oxygen and nutrients to injured areas of the spine.
Proteolytic enzyme therapy offers a safer solution to the problem of inflammation than offered by over the counter NSAIDs like ibuprofen or prescription medicines. Inflammation is almost always present with pain, and may be the actual cause of your spinal stenosis.
Trigger point therapy provides a mechanism to self-treat tiny yet painful muscle knots almost always present along with spinal stenosis.
Muscle balance therapy gets to the source of many spinal conditions which are postural dysfunctions caused by muscle imbalances.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out pain is a signal that something is wrong with the body. Whether your back suddenly “goes out” and drops you to the floor in pain, or you simply struggle through general aches and muscle weakness day after day, sooner or later it’ll drive you to seek a solution.
Let’s take a moment and emphasize one word: solution. Here’s where so many back pain treatments fail. While you may have heard how a treatment helped a friend overcome a similar bout of back pain, or read about a promising treatment online, or even received a healthcare provider’s recommendation, what matters is whether or not the treatment works for you.
For example, a friend recommends her chiropractor to you. Chiropractors can often help individuals overcome back pain by correcting spinal misalignments. Removing these misalignments, called subluxations, help eliminate nerve interference allowing your body’s natural healing ability to help you recover from back pain as well as other health issues. Pain relief often results. But what if you continue to go to treatment after treatment with only temporary relief? That’s not a solution, it’s a temporary fix.
One favored back pain treatment modality offered by conventional medicine is the cortisone shot. These steroid injections help control inflammation over the short term which can offer pain relief temporarily – after the initial pain of the shot itself at least. But again, if you’re continuing to return for treatment after treatment with no long term improvement, it’s time to find something else that works.
Again, here’s the bottom line. It doesn’t matter so much who recommends a treatment or even what kind of treatment it is. What matters is whether the treatment works for you. So set yourself three goals when seeking back pain relief:
1.Find out what caused your back pain in the first place. Remember symptoms aren’t always in the same place as the problem. You must treat the underlying cause for permanent relief.
2.Seek a back pain treatment modality, which provides a steady progression of improvement. It may not bring complete pain relief overnight, but it should at least bring incremental sustained improvement in your symptoms. Also, almost always a combination of treatments will be required in order to get lasting relief as there are always multiple underlying causes. For example, we all have muscle imbalances and they pull our bodies out of alignment. To address the imbalances you’d want to perform Muscle Balance Therapy, yet this treatment approach won’t directly address other major causes of pain like trigger points, spinal compression and torsion, nutritional imbalances and excess stress.
3. Drop failing courses of treatment — provided you were actually following the recommended course of treatment in the first place. No sense wasting your time and money, not to mention suffering continued pain, with modalities that aren’t helping you. Rule of thumb: if you have not experienced improvement after three months consider changing your treatment plan. But also know that if a treatment didn’t work for you before, that does not mean that it won’t work for you in the future. As mentioned above, you may have been using a treatment that didn’t seem to be working yet it really was, but you were unable to tell because the pain was still present due to other causes.
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Fixing a bulging or herniated disc means different things to different people. Usually it either means a) help me stop my back pain, or b) help me fix the herniated disc. The end result may be the same but the perspective is critical.
TENS is back in the news again. TENS therapy is widely used to treat 
Spinal stenosis is the formal name for a 
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out pain is a signal that something is wrong with the body. Whether your back suddenly “goes out” and drops you to the floor in pain, or you simply struggle through general aches and muscle weakness day after day, sooner or later it’ll drive you to seek a solution.
