I’ve been having trouble with a ruptured disc in my lumbar and I’m not sure what to do? It’s a fairly old injury and not severe, there’s no leg pain or numbness but I definitely have chronic pain in my back. My HMO doctor gave me 2 options: disc fusion and replacing the disc with an artificial one. Now there is no way in hell I am doing anything that extreme and I don’t know why they didn’t give me other less invasive options. I searched on Yahoo and found this guy:
http://drschiffer.com/index.html
Has anyone heard of him before and if so does he have a good reputation? Is there anyone you’d recommend I go see? Any help would be appreciated!
ive got a bulge disc on L5, i find the best thing is making sure im recovered enough from the previous training session b4 i do my next one. also massage, and strecthing and in extreme case’s a nurofen(ibuprofin) a pain killer
prophet, what disc is it? Have you tried the ELDOA stretches in the myofascial stretching article? They help alleviate disc pressure between vertebrae. There’s only 3 in the article but they include stretches for the lumbar base, mid thoracic and cervical areas. In addition to local benefits, they alleviate pressure along the whole spine.
It’s the L4 and I have tried physical therapy where I did some stretches and they didn’t really help much with pain relief.
Ask the doc if it was his back would he get the surgery. My guess would be no.
When you become impotent and incontinant (sp) then get the surgery.
Try some traction and chiropractic work. It worked for me. Give it time. The inflamation will resolve and the disc herniation will reduce with time. Doctors won’t tell you that but it does.
The key is to avoid making the herniation greater. No jumping, diving in a pool, back squats, sitting for long periods, poor posture, seated overhead presses.
My father is an osteopath and radiologist and his advice has always been to avoid back surgery unless you are losing sensation in your legs. After doing diagnosis and follow up evaluations for back surgery over many years he will tell you that the long term prognosis for surgical patients is no better than for those who skip surgery.