Chiropractic and Disc Herniations
Premier Chiropractic – Dr. DeeDee Wampfler
Disc herniations in the lumbar spine (low back) can make your life painful, interfering with many daily activities including walking, running, biking, sitting, bending over, and even sleeping. Just finding a comfortable resting position can be challenging and if you’ve ever had a disc herniation, you know how painful it can be and how much it can alter your quality of life. It can cause shooting pain down your leg, a burning, shooting, or sharp sensation, muscle weakness, knee pain, and numbness and/or tingling in your leg and feet.
A disc herniation can affect one disc or multiple discs. The discs are cushions between your vertebrae that are very strong and help support the spine and allow for movement. They have a very strong outer lining; however, the disc can be damaged and herniated by injury, repetitive trauma, chronic spinal misalignments, age, and degenerative changes.
When this happens, the disc may be herniated, also known as a slipped disc. The inner core of the disc, known as the nucleus pulposus becomes herniated to where it extrudes from the disc into the neural canal where the spinal cord is and/or the intervertebral foramina where the spinal nerves exit from the spinal cord.
Herniated discs are very common. There are four grades of disc herniations and almost all can be treated successfully by chiropractors because of the intimate relationship between the vertebrae, disc, neural canal, foramen, spinal cord, and nerve roots. The disc is connected to the vertebrae above and below it and when the vertebrae slip or become misaligned a subluxation occurs. Repeated activities like running, sitting, driving for long periods of time with spinal subluxations cause the disc to bulge and wear down and can eventually lead to a disc herniation so it makes sense that when a chiropractor, who is specially trained in anatomy and physiology and spinal manipulation, X-rays, examination procedures and such things, makes a spinal adjustment and fixes the spinal misalignments that the disc herniation also reduces and symptoms improve.
Decreasing the inflammation and swelling is also an important step to reducing the pain and taking tension off the nerves. We have specialized equipment to do exactly that called softwave tissue regeneration. This stimulates the body to draw stem cells to the area of injury and to begin the healing process and reduce inflammation immediately after treatment, in which case many patients with a disc herniation feel some instant relief. Along with specific spinal adjustments to realign the spine and bring the disc into correct position, additional exercises and therapy may be prescribed by your chiropractor.
Chiropractic care can be an effective treatment for disc herniations and is something that we as chiropractors regularly see. Chiropractic care for disc herniations reduces nerve pressure by realigning the spine and thereby reducing the disc herniation, reduces swelling and inflammation, decreases muscles spasms that are often associated with herniated discs, improves posture and spinal alignment, improves breathing and lung capacity, increases mobility and flexibility, and has a short recovery time.
We as chiropractors have also treated patients after they have had spinal surgeries, laminectomies, disc fusions, discectomies, and those who have had failed back syndrome after surgery. We always take X-rays before we perform any treatment to take the guess work out and know exactly where the problem is and if a prior surgery has been done - where and what we can do about it. It doesn’t hurt to make an appointment for a consultation to see if chiropractic can help – preferably before surgery, but after surgery as well. Yes, there are times for surgery, but the vast majority of disc herniations can be treated successfully and conservatively by a chiropractor.