Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office Treats Disc Herniation Pain
Disc herniations can bring about back pain and leg pain for some. Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office welcomes those disc herniation pain patients. Gentle, relieving treatment without surgery is what we offer. Groton back pain patients are relieved when they find us!
DISC HERNIATION: Size, Weight, Sleep
What matters when a disc triggers back pain? Its size? Its weight? Its effect on quality of life? Spinal researchers have generated data and published that how the painful disc appears on imaging doesn’t really matter. The shape and size of an intervertebral spinal disc’s bulging nucleus pulposus has no tie to a patient’s clinical presentation or symptomatology or how a patient feels. (1) The weight of a disc fragment did not relate to the amount of time the symptoms lasted or severity of pre- or post-operative leg pain nor post-operative leg pain or back pain improvement, the percentage of spinal canal occupation, herniation classification, or vertebral level. The size of the lumbar disc herniation didn’t have much effect on patient outcomes. (2) Chronic lower back pain and sciatica due to lumbar disc herniation adversely impacted sufferer’s quality of sleep. Treatment benefitted patient perception of pain in visual analog scale (VAS) scores and the PSQI Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index scores. (3) Relieving chiropractic treatment of a pain-producing disc necessitates reducing the risk of recurrent back pain episodes as well as reducing the pain of the current episode.
MANAGING BACK PAIN AND RISK OF ITS RECURRENCE
Once you have experienced a disc herniation and its resulting back pain, you don’t want it again! Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office gets that and shares that managing - as conservatively as possible - the disc herniation is more accurate than curing it. 6.05% of lumbar discectomy surgery patients experienced a re-current disc herniation. What brought that on? On their own, factors like age, BMI, current smoking status, heavy lifting, degenerative facet joint disease, operation time, and the time it took to ambulate after surgery impacted the risk of recurrent disc herniation. Combined, older age, male sex, high body mass index (BMI), and early ambulation were significant factors in the experience of a recurrent lumbar disc herniation. Managing weight, not lifting heavy items, and exercising were proposed risk reducers. (4) One new study reported that the amount of sedentary time probably did not increase the chance of a new occurrence of low back pain as much as the amount and type of physical activity. (5) Pain relief comes more as a roller coaster than a straight hill to pain relief. A disc herniation is like a bruise on an apple rendering the apple (and by comparison, the spine) never quite the same again. That’s where Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office comes in with a treatment plan that ensures you understand the disc herniation, how to feed it nutritionally, how to get it back to being strong with exercise and keeping it that way, and how to do activities of daily living to avert (re)injury. A newer systematic review of ways to approach the management of back pain listed 10 approaches: manipulation/mobilization, psychological/behavioral, advice to stay active/bed rest, reassurance, antidepressants, NSAIDS, opioids, muscle relaxants, and paracetamol. (6) Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office supports walking, moving, careful lifting, and especially being treated with gentle, safe, effective Cox® Technic spinal manipulation!
CONTACT Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Robert Patterson on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes the realistic expectations back pain patients can have with The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management.
Make your Groton chiropractic appointment now. Disc herniation sufferers are welcomed to our practice for relief and a plan for controlling its future effect on life.
