What Is A Herniated Disc - Symptoms, Causes, Treatments

today we have another video from Dr David Oliver where he's going to be talking to you all about herniated discs the causes of herniated and bulging discs as well as the symptoms you will feel if you have them as well as some of the treatment options you can explore on your own to treat them uh from your home so when we talk about A Hern disc we have to look at the actual structure that's involved here so we're talking about the invertebral disc which is the disc that separates the two bones in the spine so if we look at a model of spine you know we have the different sections of the spine we have our cervical spine which is our neck we have our thoracic spine which is our midback and then we have our lumbar spine which is our low back so we're focused right now on this low back this lumbar spine and if we look at the spine itself we have the bones we have a vertebrae here which is this white one and another one below it in between that we have this tan color material that's called your invertebral disc and the way to think about an intervertebral disc is it's like a big jelly donut so the outside's SE semi firm and inside is a jelly-like material if we get enough damage to that outer ring of that disc that jelly like material can start to squirt its way out this is not good because it's not that jelly like material is not designed to be in those areas this can cause the symptoms of a herniated disc unfortunately herni discs are very common in society nowadays and there's a variety of reasons for that the number one way to irritate a disc is flexion so basically flexion if I were to flex forward this is flexion so if we're to take the spine model again and demonstrate that if you were to look at the spine from the side and you took looked at this lower back and you flexed It Forward essentially this front area of the spine you're compressing which pushes all the material backwards if you get enough compression and enough load it's actually going to cause a bulge or herniation at this back side of the disc so repeated flexion we find to be the most problematic for these spines the most common time you're you're flexing that spine is what you're doing right now sitting sitting is flexion every time we sit down we Flex our lower spine a little bit Studies have actually shown just sitting even with great posture will increase the pressure in that disc 50% you sit with poor posture you can increase it up over 100% of what it normally is repeated flexion repeated sitting is going to weaken that disc over time which is going to cause a disc bulge can cause a herniation the most common symptoms we find with a herniated disc or a bulge discs are localized pain so we could just find pain that is just centered over the low back that can be a symptom of a bulge disc if that disc is starting to pinge or irritate a nerve route we can have symptoms that travel away from the spine the discs or the nerves that inate our lower back so if we're to look at this spine again and we're to look at these yellow nerves these nerves exit the spine and travel down our leg they control the muscle activity they control the sensations of our lower lower limbs if they start to get irritated you're going to start to feel symptoms down here it can start out with a general numbness and tingling can progress to burning pain radiating pain sharp pain electric like pain there's a variety of nerve likee symptoms that can develop if you get enough irritation to a nerve rout you can actually start to develop weakness in those lower uh extremities if we see muscle weakness we become more concerned about this condition and it's something that needs to be addressed immediately so a symptoms of hurting a disc can be anything from just general localized pain in your back it can be a radiating type of pain which can be either numbness tingling burning electric like symptoms that travel away from the spine these can go down your leg they can go to your knee they go to the back side of your leg the front side then go all the way to your toes these are what we call radiating symptoms because of impingement of a nerve room so when we talk about sitting equaling flexion I want to go go into this a little more detail because some people don't really understand why that is basically when you sit down this lower back portion here you have a little bit of a curve or you should anyway but most people don't hardly anybody sits down at their computer at their table and sits there like this most people the most common thing is actually to flatten their low back out a little and push against the back of the chair that's essentially taking those lower vertebrae and flexing them forward most people will sit there at their computers and type away and again we have that head moving forward and we're just in this rounded position so a way to visualize that is if I'm sitting here with good curved posture this is good we're not flexing forward as much but as soon as I round out my lower back and sit down that's what happens so we're flexing those lower vertebrae putting more pressure through these lower discs which eventually is going to cause weakness most people are sitting 8 to 12 hours a day every day you do that enough you're going to weaken those discs and eventually you'll have a problem so for treatments of a herniated discs there's a variety of things you can try to do yourself at home to alleviate some of that irritation and that that that inflammation that's occurring at that dis level so the easiest one to do is avoid the activities that are irritating it so that means avoiding as much sitting as possible this is hard for some people because of work but you need to take breaks at least get up every 20 to 30 minutes at least for a minute or two and walk around the other thing you could do is ice you know ice is a great way to decrease inflammation you do not want to put heat on the low back when it's in an inflamed State like this you can actually make the symptoms worse I can't tell you how many times I've had people come to my office and they tell me I I I fell asleep on a heating pack last night and I couldn't move this morning well there's a reason for that they the heat increased the inflammation in their low back which cause more pressure on the nerve more pressure at the dis level which cause more symptoms so icing for 20 minutes on and at least 40 minutes off repeating that thre the day the first several days of the injury can go a long way in reducing that inflammation so you want to ice you want to reduce the activities that are stressing those discs when you're resting instead of sitting what you should do is lay down with your feet up on a object either a chair or you can put pillows under your knees to take some pressure off anytime your knees are flexed up you're going to take pressure off your low back so when you're sleeping at night if you sleep on your back try putting pillows into your knees take some pressure off if you're sleeping on your side try actually putting a pillow between your knees and that'll take pressure off your low back as well the most common time for people that have pain and and irritation is actually in the morning time because that disc swells over night it's very common to see that you want to be very careful in the morning time getting out of bed so you don't irritate it so no flexion at all that first couple hours that you you get up you want to walk around and try and just get things moving gently you want to avoid anything that causes pain is the general rule there are a variety of exercises you can do to help with the pain so one of the best ones and one of the ones I always give patient initially when they come in with this is a cat Cow it's a simple basic exercise that we can utilize to eliminate some of the irritation or eliminate some of that bulging that's going on uh it's very good for most people I did an extensive video on the cat Cow exercise on how to do it properly and the things to avoid so you can check it out at back authority.com there are also many other exercises you could do to try to eliminate some of that irritation and that stress on the the nerve or the dis level uh so it's important to try to look into these and only do exercises that feel good if you're doing an exercise and it's increasing your symptoms or causing more discomfort it's not a good exercise when it comes to low backs the the rule is not no pay no gain if you're feeling pain you should avoid that activity uh and if none of these modifications whether it's the ice or the the the activity limitation avoiding flexion or doing your cat Cow if that's not helping to alleviate your symptoms it's important you you seek professional help all right we hope you enjoyed this video and if you did please like it and share it with a friend also if you'd like to get PDF of specific exercises to relieve herniated discs as well as low back pain we can send you that PDF right away there's going to be a link to that somewhere here on the video or there's going to be a link in the description below to get that PDF also make sure to check out our website back intelligence.com for more back pain [Music] tips

Channel: Back Intelligence

Views: 233,146

Keywords: herniated disc, what is herniated disc, herniated disc causes, herniated disc symptoms, herniated disc exercises

Id: mMNloo140pU

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 27 2018