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Old 10-05-2007, 12:04 PM
cbloom cbloom is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: communist
Posts: 8,940
Default Re: Degenerative Disc Disease

You need to find a good doctor and go right away. This needs to be treated early or it will get worse.

That said (I am not a doctor, just a guy with a back injury) -

L4-L5-S1 herniations are the most common back injury, usually just called "sciatica" in common language.

surgery - risky, definitely reduces your mobility and sports function, hopefully will eliminate pain but will cause discomfort your whole life.

management - this is just minimizing the pain and improving the function, and it is a life-long commitment. You will think about your back every day for the rest of your life, and should do some therapy for it every day.

You want to stick with management if the injury is mild. All the therapies you mention can help but by far the best thing you can do is to strengthen the muscles of your back and be very careful with how you hold your posture and how you use your back under load.

If the pain just started recently and isn't that bad, you can probably get it back to a livable level without surgery. You need to get rid of the impingement of the nerves, which means reducing inflammation and postural pressure.

Your doctor should give you antinflammatories and pain killers. Your physical therapist should help you with posture and eventually exercises. You have to learn and teach your body to hold your lower spine in a neutral position all the time. You can get the big daddies of all pain killers for this if you want to, but I don't think that's actually a good idea because the pain will become a guide for you to know you are holding your body well.

Acupuncture, massage and chiropractic care all have very little evidence supporting them as being beneficial at all. Anecdotally I think they can be beneficial, mainly at the beginning to help you get your body into a different configuration. This should be done after you get on pain killers and antinflammatories so that you can be adjusted without resistance. Finding a legitimate chiropractor is very difficult and bad ones can make you worse.
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