Each year thousands of Martin County residents are involved in car accidents. Here are 3 reasons to choose chiropractic care after a car accident. Some car accidents cause minor damage while others cause major damage. The severity of the damage to vehicles and the severity of the injuries vary. Did you know that the vehicle […]
You Should Know: Sleep Helps You Heal
Pain can keep you from getting healthy sleep. Sleep is critically important to healing from injuries as well as maintaining good health.
If you’re not getting a good night’s sleep, you’re not alone. The American Sleep Association estimates that 50-70 million adults in the US have a sleep disorder.
Though the exact mechanisms are not fully understood, the current research suggests that individuals with a sleep disorder may be more likely to develop chronic pain and people with chronic pain are more likely to have trouble sleeping.1
A growing body of evidence suggests that sleep problems pose an important risk for the development of musculoskeletal pain in adolescents. A large cross-sectional study involving 6986 adolescents found short sleep time to be a risk factor associated with regional musculoskeletal pain, particularly chronic regional pain and chronic widespread pain.2
Why Sleep is Important
When you crawl into bed to go to sleep, you might think your body is shutting down and resting. We now know nothing could be further from the truth. Sleepy time is when your body performs many “heavy lifting” tasks that repair, restore and maintain your mind, body and health.. These processes are so intensive that the body waits until you’re asleep to perform them. This is why getting proper sleep following surgery or an injury is an important part of the healing process.
If you been injured in a car wreck or suffer from chronic pain, getting that healthy sleep is easier said than done.
The Role of Sleep in Injury Recovery
Sleep plays a surprisingly important role in injury recovery . Whether you’ve been in a car accident or you’ve hurt yourself at work or play, you need to get healthy sleep so you body can repair damage to muscles, ligaments and tendon, and even bones.3
According to John DeLucchi, Physical Therapy Manager for OrthoCarolina, “If you want to upgrade your athleticism, decrease your risk of injury, decrease persistent pain, recover faster, boost your immune system, have more energy and perform better, sleep is critical.” 4
Your immune system relies on sleep to be able to fight harmful substances. When you don’t get enough sleep, your immune system can’t properly protect your body from infection. Your body makes white blood cells while you sleep. These white blood cells attack viruses and bacteria that can slow the healing process as well as make you sick.
Sleep is when the body manufactures hormones. During healthy sleep cycles, the brain triggers the release of hormones that encourage tissue growth to repair blood vessels. This helps wounds to heal faster and restores sore or damaged muscles. Some of the hormones your body makes and releases during sleep slow breathing and relax muscles. This process can reduce inflammation and assist with healing. Other hormones your body releases are the ones that make you feel hungry or full. When you don’t get enough sleep, the hormone levels of ghrelin go up. Ghrelin is called the ‘hunger hormone’ because it stimulates appetite, increases food intake and promotes fat storage. 5 At the same time the hormones that tell your body that you’re full (leptin) go down. 4 This is why poor sleep patterns often lead to overeating and obesity.
So – to recap – healthy sleep helps you
- heal and recover after surgery or injury
- relax muscles
- repair blood vessels
- fight infection
- restore sore and damaged muscles
- maintain a healthy weight
In a cruel catch-22, chronic pain sufferers find it difficult to get healthy sleep. Chronic pain can lead to sleep disturbances, depression and a heightened risk of suicide.5 Healthy sleep plays a vital role in battling chronic pain, but chronic pain often prevents healthy sleep patterns.
Good Sleep Hygiene
Here are some things to try to help you get a healthy night’s sleep.
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- Make your bedroom a sleep sanctuary. Reserve the bedroom for sleep, intimacy, and other restful activities.
- Keep your bedroom cool. Between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal sleep.6
- Banish electronics from your bedroom.
- Be careful about napping. Taking a nap at the peak of sleepiness in the afternoon can help to supplement hours missed at night. However, daytime naps can also interfere with your ability to sleep at night.
- Instead of napping, try taking a brisk walk. Exercising – especially when you’re having trouble sleeping – is tough but worth the efforts. Make sure to avoid exercising within three hours of bedtime.
- Avoid caffeine after noon.
- Alcohol is not a sleep aid. While many people think drinking alcohol helps you sleep, studies show the opposite is true. 7 While alcohol will make you fall asleep faster, the quality of sleep you get is greatly diminished. The more you drink, and the closer your drinking is to bedtime, the more it will negatively impact the quality of your sleep.
If you’re logging in 8 hours of sleep at night but don’t feel refreshed in the morning, it’s time to schedule an appointment with Advanced Wellness Solutions. There are many medical conditions – including chronic neck and back pain – that could be responsible.
You Should Know: Pain Pills Can Make Pain Worse
Pain is one of the body’s vital defense mechanisms. Pain lets the brain know that damage or death has occurred to the cells in the affected area. It’s also the way our body tells us not to use the affected area. Pain lets us know what to do and not do with an injury. Persisting in activities that cause pain often causes more damage and slows healing.
If you’ve ever been in a car accident, you may have refused treatment at the scene only to wake up the next morning feeling intense pain. The reason is your body’s incredible ability to keep you alive. When your car accident happened, your body released an adrenaline rush. An adrenaline rush, like pain, is another of the body’s vital defense mechanisms. An adrenaline rush triggers specific processes in the body to help you survive. It decreases your ability to feel pain, increases your strength temporarily and sharpens your mental focus. If you were being mauled by a tiger, an adrenaline rush is a good thing. It allows you to ignore your injuries and escape becoming a meal for a hungry tiger. However, the rush of adrenaline only decreases pain temporarily. After the effects wear off, you may be desperate to get your hands on immediate pain relief.
It’s understandable that you want to avoid pain. It’s understandable that you want to get back to doing everything you were doing before the injury. However, don’t be fooled by the clever marketing that’s been done to give you the impression that pain relief medications help the body heal faster. Of course, the ads never come right out and say that. There’s a reason for that – they can’t because it’s not true.
Pain medications do not speed up the healing process. However, pain medications can be very beneficial for the first 7 – 10 days after a traumatic injury. Pain medications – used in the short term – can provide symptomatic relief while chiropractic care breaks up scar tissue and adhesions, relieving stiffness, pain and the discomfort it causes.
We’re learning that you won’t find the solution to pain – even chronic pain – in a pill. Not only are opioid medications dangerous and addictive, they can actually cause your pain to worsen.
Prescription painkillers cause the pain you feel to increase over time.
New studies are painting an especially grim picture pointing to the long term effects of using opioids for chronic pain. It’s call Opioid-Induced Hyperalgesia or OIH. OIH is the increased perception of pain leads to needing higher doses to achieve the desired effect.
Studies show that when you use an opioid, it sets off a chain of immune signals in the spinal cord that amplify pain rather than dulling it, even after the drug leaves the body.1
Peter Grace, a neuroscientist at the University of Colorado Boulder is trying to trace hyperalgesia to the way opioids affect the immune system. His team injured rats to mimic the nerve pain humans feel. Ten days after the injury, half the rats received a 5-day treatment of morphine. Over the next 12 weeks, the researchers periodically measured the rodents’ threshold of pain. After 6 weeks, the injured rats that had received no morphine returned to the same sensitivity as uninjured control rats. Meanwhile, it took morphine-treated rats 12 weeks – twice as long – to return to the same pain sensitivity as the control rats. 2, 3
The higher the dose, more risk of overdose all the while with the patient experiencing increasing pain levels. Some studies suggest that it makes the pain even worse than when the patient began treatment.
Based on what has been learned from animal and human studies, the following may be true:4,5
- The treatment of pain with high doses of opiates may increase the chance of greater levels of pain at later times.
- Taking high doses of opiates for chronic pain may increase levels of postoperative pain, even when their opiate doses are increased.
- People who use or who have used opiates in the past, may have increased pain responses to such procedures as having their blood drawn.
The key takeaway here is that your pain can keep increasing not because of an injury, but due to the action of the opioids themselves.
According to Dr. Al Clavel who specializes in pain medicine, there’s another reason opioids can make pain worse. He writes:
Our bodies have natural opioids called endorphins. If your body becomes used to opioid pain medication, its ability to create and use natural endorphins will decrease. This makes you lose the ability to reduce pain on your own.
Using prescription painkillers to manage pain is a lot like blowing your nose with a tissue filled with sneezing powder!
There are many safer, proven ways to help relieve chronic pain. One is by using over the counter (OTC) painkillers. OTC painkillers include NSAIDs (non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs) and acetaminophen relieve (brand name Tylenol). NSAIDS relieve pain by reducing the production of prostaglandins, which are hormone-like substances that cause pain. Acetaminophen works on the parts of the brain that receive the pain messages.
These are easily available, aren’t habit-forming, and won’t leave you groggy, dizzy, or even constipated. However, these OTC painkillers can increase the risk of heart attack or stroke. They have also been known to cause stomach ulcers and bleeding as well as liver and kidney problems. These risks increase with sustained use. If you’ve been using OTC pain relievers for more than 14 days straight, you should probably talk to your health care provider about the risks. Just because its sold without a prescription doesn’t mean that OTC pain relievers are “safe” for long term use.
Topical pain relievers or liniments are also available without a doctor’s prescription. These products include creams, lotions, or sprays that are applied to the skin in order to relieve pain from sore muscles and arthritis.
Chiropractors specialize in treating the musculoskeletal injuries that cause acute and chronic pain. Chiropractic care includes a variety of pill free/drug free treatment modalities that allow your body to heal naturally.
Chiropractic care is proven effective. A study that compared the effectiveness of prescribed medications to spinal manipulation found that 94% of patients who underwent chiropractic treatment saw a 30% reduction in low back pain after 4 weeks. In comparison only 56% of patients who used regular medical care saw a 30% reduction in low back pain after 4 weeks.5
At Advanced Wellness Solutions, we would love to help you get back to living the life you love pain free! Call us at 855-509-5400 or contact us to schedule an appointment today.
You Should Know: Muscle Relaxing Drugs
If you’ve ever had a muscle spasm, you know how painful it can be. Muscle spasms can cause severe neck and back pain. They can make your life miserable.
Modern chiropractic care provides many treatment modalities that provide drug free pain relief. Before you turn to muscle relaxers for back or neck pain, here’s some things you should know.
If you seek usual medical care (UMC) for back pain, the doctor may prescribe muscle relaxants.1
New treatment guidelines from the ACP strongly recommend that people with back pain first try non-drug measures such as yoga, physical therapy, chiropractic and massage before resorting to over-the-counter or prescription pain relievers and muscle relaxants.2
What are muscle relaxers
The term “muscle relaxers” is definitely deceiving because this classification includes a wide range of drugs with different indications and mechanisms of action.3
Many muscle relaxers cause sedation throughout the central nervous system. In other words, they make all of your muscles relax, not just the tight ones. They also make you feel sleepy. If acute pain from an injury is making it difficult to sleep, this can be a good thing. Sleep helps you heal. However, this can make living your life during your waking hours difficult.
There is growing concern surrounding these drugs because it is not clear how effective muscle relaxers are when it comes to relieving pain. Concerns have been also raised about the adverse side effects involved with many of these drugs. In addition to sedation, potential adverse effects include drowsiness, headache, blurred vision, nausea, vomiting and the potential for addiction.3
Acute Pain vs Chronic Pain
Acute pain is immediate pain. You can often identify what you were doing to cause the pain. Sometimes the cause of acute pain can be a seemingly harmless movement, like lifting something heavy. On the other hand, chronic pain is pain that lasts beyond the typical expected healing period.
Jeffrey E. Keller is a Board Certified Emergency Physician with 25 years of emergency medicine practice experience before moving full time into his “true calling” of Correctional Medicine. His recommendations to physicians regarding prescribing muscle relaxers in his post Skeletal Muscle Relaxers Do Not Relax Skeletal Muscles.
1. Never prescribe muscle relaxers long term for chronic conditions.
2. If you prescribe a “muscle relaxer” for acute low back pain, use them only for a short time. The number usually bandied about is no more than 7 days.
Ignore Pain at Your Peril
Pain is simply one way your body communicates with you. It’s your brain’s way of saying, “STOP! BE CAREFUL! This part of your body needs your attention!”
Muscle relaxers mask the symptom of muscle spasm pain. A muscle spasm is not only a reaction to an injury, it’s also your body’s way of trying to protect itself from further injury.
Chiropractic is a health care profession dedicated to providing non-surgical treatment of disorders of the nervous system and musculoskeletal system. Chiropractors have a wide assortment of proven treatments and modalities that can provide drug free pain relief for muscle spasms.4
Advanced Wellness Solutions focuses on creating individualized treatment plans incorporating treatment modalities combined with the use of patient-driven care such as exercise, activity modification, and ergonomic modifications. In other words, Dr. Danielle has a lot of tricks up her sleeve to help you get drug free relief from muscle spasm pain.
Contact Advanced Wellness Solutions at 855-509-5400 to schedule your appointment today.
Five Ways Chronic Pain Affects You
There are two types of pain: acute and chronic. Acute pain is the pain you feel immediately after an injury. Chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts beyond the expected period of healing for an illness or injury.
We’re learning that even low grade chronic pain can affect every aspect of your life. Patients suffering from chronic pain are often at risk for developing further complications, including altered mental states and physical dysfunctions. Studies show the brain reacts differently to short-term acute pain than it does to long-term chronic pain.Science Daily
The constant assault of chronic pain can affect your life in a number of ways. According Perry G. Fine, MD of the Department of Anesthesiology, School of Medicine, Pain Research Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, in the Long-Term Consequences of Chronic Pain include:
- sleep disturbances
- cognitive processes and brain function
- mood/mental health
- cardiovascular health
- sexual function
Chronic pain can influence your thoughts, feelings, sleep patterns, memory, concentration, and relationships.
Chronic pain causes sleep disturbances
Your skeletal muscles possess the amazing ability to completely regenerate following injury. Muscles and tissues repair during sleep.Science Direct However, pain disturbs your sleep. This sets up a catch-22. Sleep helps your body heal. You need good quality sleep so your body can heal, but because you’re in pain, you can’t sleep.
According to SleepFoundation.org,
We know that pain triggers poor sleep. For instance, someone experiencing lower back pain may experience several intense microarousals (a change in the sleep state to a lighter stage of sleep) per each hour of sleep, which lead to awakenings. However, microarousals are innocuous for a person not experiencing chronic pain. Pain is a serious intrusion to sleep. Pain is frequently associated with insomnia and these coexisting problems can be difficult to treat. One problem can exacerbate the other.
Chronic pain affects cognitive processes and brain function
If you’re in chronic pain, you’re not operating at your cognitive best. Cognitive processes such as memory and attention have been shown to be impaired in up to two thirds of patients with chronic pain.Oxford Academic A comparative study assessed the cognitive functions in adults with chronic pain. Forty participants had chronic pain and 29 were pain-free. The chronic pain participants performed significantly worse than the pain-free participants on the cognitive measures of long-term memory, selective attention, processing speed, and executive functioning. Significant differences between groups were evident in all cognitive domains. NCBI: Chronic Pain
Chronic pain affects mood/mental health
The emotional effects of chronic pain include:
- Depression
- Anger
- Anxiety, and
- Fear of re-injury
Chronic pain can influence your thoughts, feelings, memory, concentration, and even connections with others. Living with chronic pain can affect your mood, making you more susceptible to depression, anxiety, and fear. Chronic pain can has been demonstrated to sleep disturbances, depression, and a heightened risk of suicide.NBCI Such mood disorders can also promote a dependence upon prescription medications designed to treat the pain, such as opioids. The more scared, alone or sad you feel, the more likely you are to depend upon medications which temporarily mask the pain by providing a “euphoric” feeling. However, when the effects of the medication wear off, the negative feelings return. If you’re suffering from chronic pain, this is yet another catch-22 cycle you can find yourself in.
Chronic pain affects cardiovascular health
Chronic pain can lead to a chronic stress reaction that causes an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. This stress reaction can lead to harmful health effects, such as a reduced ability to fight off illnesses and diseases. It also can increase the risk for conditions such as heart disease.Cleveland Clinic
Chronic pain affects sexual function
Chronic pain may interfere with your sexuality because of the pain itself. However, other factors associated with your chronic pain, including mood disorders, decreased sex drive (libido), medications or stress, can also affect your sexual function Mayo Clinic.
You may not have to suffer with chronic pain.
Let’s be honest, there is no “one size fits all” solution to chronic pain. (This type of thinking has lead to the opioid crisis.) However, there are many drug free therapies and modalities which can dramatically reduce and even eliminate chronic pain. There are even things you can do at home to help relieve your chronic pain. If you live in or near Stuart, Florida, contact Dr. Danielle at Advanced Wellness Solutions to see how she can help relieve your chronic pain.
You Should Know: Carpal tunnel syndrome
Carpal tunnel syndrome is a surprisingly common condition that causes pain, numbness, and tingling in the hand and arm.
The pain, numbness and tingling is caused by pressure on the median nerve. The carpal tunnel is a narrow passageway in your wrist. It is surrounded by bones and ligaments on the palm side of your hand. The median nerve passes through this narrow passageway. When the median nerve is compressed, the symptoms can include numbness, tingling and weakness in the hand and arm.
In its early stages, carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms may include your hand tingles and feels weak, or the fingers numb, or both. These symptoms can often disrupt your sleep.
Diagnosis:
Sometimes carpal tunnel syndrome can be mistaken for something else, such as pressure on nerves in the neck due to disc problems or arthritis, which can cause similar symptoms. A nerve conduction study can be used to confirm a carpal tunnel syndrome diagnosis as well as measure how severe the compression of the nerve is.
Treatment:
Numbness, tingling and pain in your hands, fingers and wrist is an example of an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure. Early correct diagnosis and treatment can dramatically improve your outcome. Treatment modalities depend upon the cause of your symptoms.
If Left Untreated:
It’s important to seek treatment if you have signs and symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome that interfere with your normal activities and sleep patterns. Permanent nerve and muscle damage can occur without treatment.
If left untreated, you may begin dropping things. Activities that require fine finger movements, such as writing or fastening buttons, will become more difficult. You may begin to feel you are losing coordinated movement of your fingers. Moving your thumb may also become difficult.
Carpal tunnel syndrome is compression of the median nerve. This compression can lead to permanent nerve and muscle damage without treatment. Dr. Danielle’s EMG/NCV certifications make her uniquely qualified to diagnose and treat this condition. She can also help you to determine if surgery is necessary.
Your first appointment will take approximately 55 minutes, giving you plenty of time to communicate your concerns. This also gives Dr. Danielle time to explain in easy to understand terms your condition and treatment goals.
Contact our office by calling 855-509-5400 to schedule your appointment.
Super Bowl Super Sick Monday
There’s a big push to make the day after the Super Bowl a holiday. According to the NY Post, 24 percent of Americans say the day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday. The reason behind the push goes beyond the junk food and alcohol consumed while watching the game. The game runs late so many lose sleep that night.
Even if you didn’t “eat, drink and make merry,” just by loosing sleep you can still wake up feeling as if you did.
There’s good news if the Super Bowl represents a single “glitch” in your normal nightly sleep routine. According to recent studies, you can expect to fully recover from a single sleep deficit in four days. That means your withdrawal from football is going to last a lot longer than your Super Bowl Monday sickness. Unfortunately, many of us don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis and good quality sleep helps you heal. If you’ve been injured in a car accident or are suffering from chronic pain, you need to sleep so your body can heal itself.
Sleep deficiency is serious
For those who lose sleep on a regular basis, there’s a lot of bad news on the horizon. Sleep deprivation can quickly spiral into the much more serious condition, sleep deficiency. According to the NIH,
Sleep deficiency can lead to physical and mental health problems, injuries, loss of productivity, and even a greater risk of death. Sleep deficiency also is associated with an increased risk of injury in adults, teens, and children. For example, driver sleepiness (not related to alcohol) is responsible for serious car crash injuries and death. In the elderly, sleep deficiency might be linked to an increased risk of falls and broken bones. In addition, sleep deficiency has played a role in human errors linked to tragic accidents, such as nuclear reactor meltdowns, grounding of large ships, and aviation accidents.
Sleep deficiency has also been linked to many chronic health problems, including heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, obesity, and depression. Studies suggest that sleep loss (defined as less than 7 hours per night) may have wide-ranging effects on the cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, and nervous systems, including the following:
- Obesity in adults and children
- Diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance
- Cardiovascular disease and hypertension
- Anxiety symptoms
- Depressed mood
- Alcohol use
As you can see, sleep deficiency is a serious health issue.
Want to know if you’re sleep deficient?
If you’re experiencing excessive daytime sleepiness, you’re probably not getting enough quality sleep. However, there are other symptoms including:
- yawning
- moodiness
- fatigue
- irritability.
- depressed mood.
- difficulty learning new concepts.
- forgetfulness.
- inability to concentrate or a “fuzzy” head.
If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms, start keeping a sleep diary. Write down
- when you went to bed
- how long it took you to fall asleep
- when you woke up
- how alert and rested you feel in the morning
- how sleepy you feel during the day.
Do this for at least two weeks. If you live in Stuart or Palm City, Florida, you should schedule an appointment with Advanced Wellness Solutions to go over your sleep diary. You’ll be glad you did.
Can chronic pain harm your overall health?
No one likes living with chronic pain, but many of us push through rather than address the underlying issue. Did you know that chronic pain can harm your health even if it’s not limiting your activities?
If you’re living with (and ignoring) chronic pain, university medical school studies reveal that you may be doing long term damage to your overall health.
According to a University of Utah School of Medicine report published at NCBI, chronic pain can significantly impact your overall health.
One of the ways chronic pain can affect your health is by disrupting your sleep. According to a study released by the American Psychological Association, healthy sleep has been proven to be the single most important factor in predicting longevity, more influential than diet, exercise, or heredity!
Another negative health effect of chronic pain is it impairs your cognitive processes, brain function – even your your mood and your mental health. 1 2 3
As if that laundry list weren’t enough, the University of Utah study shows that chronic pain can even impact your cardiovascular health, not to mention your sexual function.
The Good New is: Chronic pain can often be successfully managed without drugs, injections or surgery.
Modern chiropractic care addresses so much more than just neck and back pain. Modern chiropractors treat the whole person – not just a specific body part.
Dr. Danielle has helped hundreds of people suffering from chronic pain return to the activities they love while enjoying pain free living.
If you’re dealing with chronic pain – don’t delay! Chronic pain can have a domino effect on your overall health!
Don’t suffer another day with pain! If you live in or near Stuart, Florida or Palm City, Florida, you owe it to yourself to schedule an appointment with Advanced Wellness Solutions. Call 855-509-5400 to schedule your appointment today.
Chiropractic Treatment: Disc Herniation
“Oh no! Not a herniated disc!” This phrase is probably uttered every day in doctor’s offices across the country.
Your vertebrae is made up of a series of rubbery discs that acts as cushions between each of the bones that make up the spine. When a disc is “herniated” it means that the soft center of a rubbery disc is pushing through a crack in the tougher exterior casing.
You might be surprised to learn that some people have a herniated disc and don’t know it. Unfortunately, in some cases this condition can irritate nearby nerves and result in pain, numbness, or weakness in an arm or leg.
You should know that with proper treatment a herniated disc does not mean a lifetime sentence of unbearable pain.
Are herniated disc serious? Yes. However with proper care and monitoring many herniated discs can be managed successfully.
Seek immediate medical attention if you present with any of the following symptoms:
- Loss of balance
- Loss of bladder control
- Loss of sensation especially in the inner part of the thighs
- Loss of consciousness
- Vomiting
- Symptoms are rapidly getting worse
A disc herniation falls into a broader category of disc derangement.
Disc derangement is when the disc positioned between your vertebrae has damage to its structure. This damage can be minor or major depending on age and type of trauma. The disc is a made up of a gelatinous center called the nucleus pulposus surrounded by fibrocartilaginous material (annulus fibrosis). When the annulus fibrosus is torn due to stress the gelatinous nucleus pulposus can ooze out creating disc derangement. How far that gelatinous nucleus pulposus oozes out is what determines what kind of disc derangement you have.
There are four stages of disc derangement:
- degeneration,
- prolapse,
- extrusion,
- and sequestration.
Degeneration is where the nucleus pulposus is no longer in a nice contained area but rather is oozing into the layers of annulus fibrosis. The oozing hasn’t gone far but the nucleus pulposus is no longer contained.
Prolapse is when the nucleus pulposus is pushing all the way out to the last layers of the annulus fibrosis. It hasn’t left the confinement of the disc but its close.
Extrusion is when nucleus pulposus has left the confinement of the annulus fibrosis. This is the state where nucleus pulposus can physically start interfering with surrounding structures.
Finally sequestration is when the nucleus pulposus has left the confinement of the annular fibrosis and has broken off into little pieces. These pieces can travel and cause interference with the surrounding structures.
Any stage of disc derangement can cause pain. How much pain depends upon the individual and the location of the derangement. However extrusion and sequestration can pose the most serious risk of the four. Anytime nucleus pulposus has left its confinement, it can cause impingement and pain.
When a disc undergoes derangement it was believed that it actually pinched a nerve causing pain. Although that can be the case with some types of derangement, in general the pain associated with disc derangement comes from the inflammatory response of the body to the change in structure. The inflammation occurs around the deranged disc and then the nerve and other pain sensitive structures become irritated, causing pain.
Herniated discs are diagnosed with MRI imaging which can tell the doctor where and what type of disc derangement is present. MRI imaging can also show the doctor if any other structures are being physically intruded by the disc derangement.
What are the symptoms of a herniated disc?
Disc derangement can have many presentations and should always be check by a qualified medical professional such as a medical doctor or chiropractor.
Some people have herniated discs and do not demonstrate any symptoms. However when symptoms do arise they are different depending on location of the herniated disc.
Cervical disc herniation symptoms:
- Pain in the arm or hand, this pain often feels like it is traveling down the arm or radiating
- Numbness and tingling
- Weakness in the arms
- In severe cases reduced reflexes in the upper limbs with increased reflexes in the lower limbs
Lumbar disc herniation symptoms:
- Low back pain that travels down the buttocks, legs and feet
- Numbness and tingling
- Weakness in the legs
- Decreased reflexes
Risk factors for herniated disc:
- Overweight: excess weight puts extra stress and different weight loading on discs
- Physically demanding jobs
- Genetics: a family history of disc herniation
- Age: most likely to occur between 30-50
What causes a herniated disc?
Herniated discs happen gradually with repeat stress. A person can’t often pinpoint when they herniated a disc. For example, someone may say that bending over to pick up a piece of paper caused their symptoms. In this case, it wasn’t the simple act of bending over but rather the repeated stress to the disc that caused the herniation. When that person bent over, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
How do you treat a herniated disc?
Treatments for a herniated disc include:
- Chiropractic treatment with adjustments
- Cervical traction
- Physical therapy
- At home exercises and stretches
- Postural correction
- Weight reduction
- OTC, muscle relaxers and other narcotics
- Surgery
Chiropractic care with flexion distraction has been shown to be helpful in disc herniation treatment.
An important thing to remember with a herniated disc is to avoid too much bed rest. Taking it easy and not lifting heavy things is fine but lying in bed waiting for the pain to go away is one of the worst things you can do for your spine. Retaining motion is crucial when there is a herniation of a disc.
Not every herniated disc needs intervention. If you are experiencing herniated disc symptoms or fear you have a herniated disc, and you live in Stuart, Florida or Palm City, Florida, you should contact Advanced Wellness Solutions.