Visit A Physical Therapist
Not everybody who has a herniated disc is going to require surgery. In fact, in most cases, conservative treatments like physical therapy are considered the first route of treatment for herniated discs. And physical therapy will help you heal properly and prevent complications after your operation, even if you need surgery to correct your herniated disc.
Physical therapists are highly qualified movement specialists who offer safe, non-invasive, personalized, and drug-free services to relieve herniated disc symptoms, repair disc tissue, and avoid persistent or chronic pain, as shown by studies.
Another advantage of physical therapy is that it is recognized as a cost-effective way to enhance the quality of life of a person without reducing their need for pain medicine and surgery.
How To Sit In A Car With A Herniated Disc
Sitting in the car can be very painful with a herniated disc. Not only does sitting in a car tend to put pressure on the discs, but every bump and vibration can also send a painful twinge up your spine. The key to sitting in a car with a herniated disc is to maintain the natural s-curve of the spine. Heres how.
Avoid a vertical seatback.
- This may seem counter-intuitive, but youll want to allow the seat to recline a bit. With the seat reclined, keep your upper back pressed against the top of the seat. This will help you keep a hollow at your low back, therefore helping maintain the s-curve of the spine.
Use a rolled-up towel or pillow.
- Placing a towel or pillow between your low back and the seat can also help you maintain the structurally-sound s-curve of the spine. This is best if youll be driving for 30-minutes or more. Simply adjust the towel or pillow until it feels comfortable. This is usually just above belt-level.
Use the footplate.
- Nearly all vehicles have a footplate on the very left of the drivers side footwell. When you press into the footplate with your left foot, you can leverage your hips back against the bottom of the seatback. This also helps keep the pressure off your discs.
How Can You Prevent Lower Back Pain
While you cant stop aging or change your genetic makeup, lifestyle changes can help manage and prevent lower back pain. Having a healthy lifestyle may make you less likely to suffer an accidental injury, too.
Improve your physical fitness. People who are not physically fit are more likely to develop lower back pain because strong core muscles help support the lower back.
Stay active. People who lead sedentary lives may be more likely to injure themselves when they do exert themselves. As far as back health is concerned, its better to do a smaller amount of physical activity most days of the week than to sit all week and over-exert yourself on the weekends.
Lose weight if necessary. The more you weigh, the more pressure you have on your lumbar vertebrae. Being overweight or obese can put stress on the back and lead to lower back pain.
Lift heavy objects the right way. Be sure to squat while lifting so that your hips and knees do much of the work. Keep the load close to your chest while you lift.
Your legs, not your lower back, should be the main driver when you’re lifting something heavy.Make your workspace as ergonomic as possible. If you sit at a desk, make sure your chair has plenty of low-back support and your hips are at a right angle to the floor.
Dont use tobacco products. In addition to all the other health problems tobacco use causes, it can restrict blood flow and oxygen to the discs, causing them to degenerate faster.
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Seeing A Physical Therapist
In most cases, seeing a physical therapist relieves the pain associated with a herniated disc and trains your body on prevention of back and neck pain in the future. Its important to make sure that if you are seeing a physician for your disc problems, that they work in coordination with our physical therapists, so that you can achieve the fastest recovery possible.
Other Causes Of Back Pain
There are other causes of back pain, so see your doctor if pain is strong, persistent or continues throughout the night. Other reasons for back pain include:
- muscular pain this is common, and usually does not spread into the legs. It is very likely to resolve on its own without the need for specific treatment
- fractures occur more commonly in:
- older people
- people with osteoporosis
- people taking medications that cause bone loss .
Fractures can also happen after direct injury or trauma to the back
Scoliosis may:
- develop due to a person having increased soft tissue elasticity
- develop with increasing age.
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How Can Exercises Help
Exercises and physiotherapy are often important parts of recovery from a herniated disk. A doctor will usually recommend a few days of rest after experiencing a herniated disk.
Doing gentle activities and exercises will strengthen the muscles that support the spine and reduce pressure on the spinal column. They will also promote flexibility in the spine and may help reduce the risk of a herniated disk from recurring.
A doctor may suggest starting small and building up the level of activity slowly. They will discuss specific exercises that a person should and should not perform during the recovery period.
Gentle activities that can help with a herniated disk include:
- walking
- cycling
Perform all exercises in a slow and controlled manner, especially when bending or lifting. Exercises should not hurt. If a person feels pain, they should stop doing the exercises and speak with their doctor.
Below, we discuss exercises that can help treat a herniated disk pain in the neck and back.
Check Out This Video About Herniated Discs From Our Chiropractor Dr Oliver:
Other herniated disk treatment options include:
Rest often a couple of days of rest will help to calm severe pain caused by lumbar disc herniation. However, its important that you dont rest for longer than this as it can actually worsen pain and stiffness.
Anti-inflammatory medications medications such as ibuprofen and naproxen may help to reduce inflammation and relieve pain.
Physical therapy performing specific exercises to increase range of motion and strengthen muscles in your lower back and core may help to relieve pain and reduce your chance of re-injuring yourself.Spinal manipulation manipulation of the joints of the lower back may help to improve range of motion and decrease pain.
Massage therapy may help to increase blood circulation and relax muscles thereby helping to reduce pain.Epidural steroid injections injection of corticosteroids into the affected area may help to reduce local inflammation and relieve pain.
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The Best Sitting Positions For A Herniated Disc:
Not all herniated discs cause pain. Sometimes there are no symptoms at all. But, when a herniated disc presses on the nerve in the spine, it can be extremely painful. While many people are concerned with relieving pain from a herniated disc while running or otherwise staying active, we cant forget about sitting.
When you sit in certain positions, it puts pressure on that disc, causing it to press, or continue pressing, on the nerve. So the best thing you can do is try a few different positions until you find one that relieves the pain. If at all possible, its best to avoid sitting as much as you can. This will allow the disc to heal quickly. But, since thats not always possible, here are some of the best ways to sit with a herniated disc.
What Structures Make Up The Back
The back is an intricate structure of bones, muscles, and other tissues that form the back, or posterior part of the bodys trunk, from the neck to the pelvis. At the center is the spinal column, which not only supports the upper bodys weight but houses and protects the spinal cord the delicate nervous system structure that carries signals that control the bodys movements and convey its sensations. Stacked on top of one another are about 30 bones the vertebrae that form the spinal column, also known as the spine. Each of these bones contains a roundish hole that, when stacked in line with all the others, creates a channel that surrounds the spinal cord. The spinal cord descends from the base of the brain and extends to just below the rib cage.1
Starting at the top, the spine has four vertebral regions:
- Seven cervical or neck vertebrae
- Twelve thoracic or upper back vertebrae
- Five lumbar vertebrae , known as the lower back
- The sacrum and coccyx, a group of bones fused together at the base of the spine.
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Secret #: Practice Yoga
Perhaps one of the best-kept secrets about healing a herniated disc and preventing a reoccurrence is to practice yoga.
While every pose is not going to be suitable for you while you are healing, many of the poses can help shift the weight on the spine, allowing the disc to return to its correct position.
Yoga is a great way to practice better posture, reduce stress and muscle tension, improve breathing and circulation, while improving core muscles that support the spine.
Dont attempt yoga poses if you have never done them before. You might injure yourself more. See a yoga teacher and be sure to tell them about your bulging or herniated disc so they can offer you the proper poses for healing and strengthening.
Some of the best yoga poses for those with disc problems are:
- Ardah Uttanasana
- Childs Pose
Ways To Deal With Herniated Disc Pain
Have you ever had a herniated disc? If so, you know the pain can be quite unbearable.
A herniated disc happens when the outer fibrous layer of a spinal disc tears. This allows the discs gel-like filling to leak out into the surrounding joint space. In many cases, this can irritate or compress nearby nerves and other structures, leading to uncomfortable symptoms like back pain, neck pain, and pain, numbness, and weakness in an arm or leg.
If youre currently living with a herniated disc, we encourage you to call our office today to find out how physical therapy can help you heal. In the meantime, keep reading to learn five top tips from our physical therapist team about how to deal with this condition!
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Referred Pain To And From The Lumbar Spine
Pain in the area of the lumbar spine may be due to important problems that are actually unrelated to the back. Referred pain occurs when a problem in one place in the body causes pain in another place. The pain travels down a nerve.. Sources of referred pain to the low back may include abdominal aneurysm , tubal pregnancy, kidney stones, pancreatitis, and colon cancer. Clues to these maladies include pain that waxes and wanes over a short period, with frequent peaks of intense pain, weight loss, abnormalities found during abdominal exam, and trace amounts of blood in the urine. On the other hand, pain can be referred from the low back and be felt in another location, as is often the case with . For example, it is not rare for a patient with a slipped disc in the lower back to have pain in the back of the thigh, or in the calf or even the foot, and not have any low back pain. This situation requires a doctor to sort out the type of pain and to do the examination required to show that the pain is actually coming from the spine .
Causes And Risk Factors
Between the bones of your spinal column are discs made of a tough outer casing with a gel-like centre. The gel in the discs allows the back to flex and bend, and acts as a shock absorber between the vertebrae.
As we age the discs become less flexible and begin to harden, making them more prone to tears. A herniated disc can be caused by a single excessive strain or injury. However, as degeneration of the discs progresses with age, some people may suffer herniated discs from more minor exertions or twists.
Factors that can increase the likelihood of a herniated disc include:
- Ageing
- Being overweight
- Smoking
- Incorrect lifting
- Repetitive strenuous activity
- Sedentary lifestyle .
The most common age to develop a herniated disc is between 30 and 50 years. Men are affected nearly twice as often as women are.
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How Does A Slipped Disc Progress
In most cases, the symptoms tend to improve over a few weeks. Research studies of repeated magnetic resonance imaging scans have shown that the bulging prolapsed portion of the disc tends to shrink over time in most cases. The symptoms then tend to ease and, in most cases, go away completely. About 50 out of every 100 people improve within 10 days, and 75 out of a 100 after four weeks. In only about 2 out of every 100 people with a ‘slipped’ disc is the pain still bad enough after 12 weeks that they end up having to have surgery .
Medication For The Pain
There are a number of different medications for the relief of sciatic nerve pain caused by a slipped disc. Most of these are painkillers, but you can also use muscle relaxants and . The following medications are the most commonly used. They are all available without a prescription when taken at a low dose:
Some of the medication options have to be prescribed by a doctor. These include:
Anticonvulsants and antidepressants are typically not used unless the symptoms last for a longer period of time or the painkillers don’t provide enough relief.
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Secret#: Sit Up Straight And Don’t Slouch
How many times did you hear your mother say, Sit up straight! or Dont slouch, youll ruin your back!? We are betting she said this a hundred times and you know what? Mom really does know best. She was absolutely right.
Believe it or not, bad posture, whether just sitting or standing or lifting, places a huge load on your lumbar spine, which will aggravate a herniated disc.
While bad posture might not actually cause a disc to rupture, it certainly isnt doing it any favors. The discs in our spines become harder and less flexible as we age. If a disc is already bulging, an incorrect posture will increase the severity of the problem.
If you are unsure about your posture, whether sitting, standing, lifting, or exercising, speak to your chiropractor. They can guide you and advise you on the best methods for improving your posture. Your mom will be proud.
Common Symptoms Of A Herniated Disc
While most herniated discs occur in the lower back, they also can occur in the cervical area. Symptoms are dependent on where the disc is located and whether or not its compressing a nerve.
Typically, one side of the body is affected. You may experience arm or leg pain, tingling, or numbness or weakness. If the herniated disc is located in the back, youll likely experience pain in the buttocks, thigh, and calf.
If its located in the neck, youll likely experience pain in the arm and shoulder. The pain with a herniated disc can be sharp. Pain, numbness, and tingling can radiate to other parts of the body, too.
Keep in mind that you can have a herniated disc with no symptoms.
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Secret #: Get Chiropractic Care
How to heal a bulging disc naturally? With chiropractic care, of course! One of the best ways to stop the pain and heal a bulging disc is to see your chiropractor. Not only can a chiropractor diagnose the root cause and find out if you have a herniated or bulging disc, but they can treat it as well.
After imaging, your chiropractor will set up a treatment plan that is designed for you and your exact needs. Since everyone is different, not everyone will be treated the same way.
More than likely, your chiropractor will perform a series of spinal adjustments, to realign the vertebrae and discs. This will prevent any further protrusion outside the spine. Then, depending on your needs, your chiropractor might also use other modalities including:
These are just a few of the things that your chiropractor can offer. You will get the quickest results, not to mention being out of pain much faster, by starting a treatment program with your chiropractor.
What can you do for herniated disc pain? See our most trusted local chiropractor sooner, rather than later!
We use the Alaska Back Pain Protocol method, which involves a three-step treatment plan that has proven itself to be successful for thousands of people with bulging or herniated discs!
