I wanted to get involved with the Chiropractors are Quacks/Not Quacks thread but figured I'd stay out of it. However this topic I can help with, or at the very least offer some insight/support.
First off, here's my back as seen from the MRI they let me keep.
From the MRI you can see a moderate herniation at L4 and a severe herniation at L5. You can also see that both discs show serious "degenerative disc disease". Healthy discs should be full of fluid and obviously not impinging on your spinal cord. In the photo above the white area is actually a sack that hoses the spinal cord so contact with the sack does not necessarily mean nerve contact and all that fun stuff that comes with it.
For some background info I was 23 when the MRI was taken and am quite athletic. When I had finally made it through the queue and had the MRI above I was essentially "back pain free"...
With that said, surgery should be saved for a last resort. First of all numerous studies show that surgery alone actually has a relatively low success rate. If you didn't have an "oh " moment discs herniate for a reason and surgery does not fix the reason. Even if a surgery is successful you have a high chance of a relapse since you have still ignored the root cause. Actually, even if you did have an "oh " moment, said moment could have been prevented with proper muscle support.
Next, surgery on a herniated disc is an amputation of sorts. What they're going to do is cut off the bulging bit in
while hoping that is what is actually causing your pain. When it gone it's gone forever. It's not going to grow back and you'll have no chance of having that disc slip back in, which can and does happen. You'll forever have a smaller disc and increase your chance for other problems in the future, like bone contact when your disks shrink with age, like they will.
I mentioned
hoping because at the end of the day a doctor can not pin point your exact location of pain. I had sciatica with pain from my spine all the way down to my toes at times. I also had numbness that showed up after some chiropractic visits (I'll save this one for now). Sciatica, more precisely numbness where I had it, can be cause by a few things. Along with disc impingement on the spinal cord something as simple as a tight muscle in your ass, known as "piriformis syndrome", can compress the nerve and offer herniated disc like symptoms. Wouldn't it be a shame to have surgery only to find out a simple massage could have done more good for you pain?
OK, assuming your doctor wasn't an idiot, mine was, I'll explain what helped me instead of just trying to talk you out of surgery. I went to my family doctor, then a physiotherapist, then a chiropractor, then a sports medicine doctor, another physiotherapist, another chiro on the side and finally started yoga.
Trying not to let this be any longer then it already is I'll summarize. Physio and acupuncture each helped a lot at certain stages of my injury. Primarily the combination of having my sports med doctor work with my physiotherapist. Yoga helped the most out of anything
as soon I was able to safely participate in yoga. "Pigeon" pose offered the most relief for me. The pose is essentially a glute/piriformis stretch which would indicate most of my pain was cause by "piriformis syndrome". That said, the general core strength and flexibility I gained from yoga no doubt removed a lot of the stress off my discs if they were in fact the problem.
You also have to know things will take a while. I had a hard time when my sports medicine doctor told me it would take a year to get better. Well a year later I can say it's really not that bad and I'm stronger and healthier as a result.
Hopefully some of that made sense and I didn't ramble too much. I'd be happy to answer more questions if you have any. I could have kept going but I figured no one else wanted to hear it...
Herniated Discs : Remedies?
