Severe Back Pain And What Your Doctor May Be Missing...

I'm Dr. Edward Carlton D.C. and your back pain, according to the latest studies on back pain, is likely caused by damage to a disc or discs in your spine. Not long ago we all thought it was muscles... NOT true! It's your discs and 2nd place goes to the joint capsule (joints in your back).

I'm often asked by patients, "Doctor, how did this happen?" referring to damage discovered to the discs in their spines. Most have been told that age is the primary cause of the degeneration found in their spine... also NOT true! Age is a factor, but not the cause of it... and I can prove it.

When evaluating a patient's MRI, I'll often point out all of the normal discs in the patient's spine in addition to the damaged disc(s). Now let me ask you a question: regardless of the patient's age, why is one or some of the discs damaged and others are normal? Aren't all of the discs the same age? Of course they are. If age is the primary reason discs degenerate then they would all be degenerative since they are all the same age. However, this is usually NOT the case. Usually it is just one or two damaged discs causing your pain.

So what is the primary cause? What is the main reason why degenerative disc disease occurs? Well, you're not going to like the answer. You didn't maintain your spine properly or at all. During our lifetime we all have trauma to the spine. From small things like strains from lifting or fast movements, to moderate things like falls, to major traumas like auto accidents and everything in between. Contact sports, skateboarding, skiing, sleeping wrong, wrestling, picking up your children... forces come to bear on our spine in everything we do. Most of the time our body can adapt to these forces, but when the body is overcome... that is when damage can occur.

Tears in the muscles, tendons, ligaments, joint capsule or disc set the stage for future degenerative disc disease. What you do when this occurs is very important... just like it is important to immediately ice an injury to decrease inflammation to decrease the amount of scar tissue that develops... what you do to maintain your spinal health immediately is important to prevent future degeneration in the spine.

The problem occurs when MOST people do nothing and the result is similar to NEVER brushing & flossing your teeth... it's going to start to rot! Only when your spine rots, it can really ruin your life.

Now I'm going to let most of you off the hook. You've never been told how to maintain your spine and if you have, human nature takes over (you are human right?) and we often don't maintain our bodies very well. We are much more likely to maintain our cars than our bodies.

I'm going to explain how to maintain your spine in a minute, but before I do, I need to explain the "pathway to degenerative disc disease" and you'll understand the mechanism of the damage and knowledge is critical to end the suffering. Like the good book says, "my people suffer for lack of knowledge."

When trauma occurs and scar tissue develops around the spine, motion dysfunction occurs between two bones of the spine. The disc in between the bones loses its blood supply after about age twenty and relies on motion to pump blood, oxygen, water, and nutrients into its interior to stay healthy. Motion dysfunction leads to a lack of these critical components and the result is devastating to the disc.

As the water content is lost, the disc becomes "desiccated" or dehydrated and the disc loses height. This leads to bulging of the disc as the bones get closer together, much like a balloon between your hands if pressed together will "balloon out" and bulge. This causes increased disc pressure and in combination with decreasing health of the disc due to loss of nutrients, leads to weakening and further tearing of the fibers of the disc.

The "nucleus" of the disc, which I've referred to as the jelly in a donut starts to migrate out toward the outside of the disc eventually leading to a "herniated disc" or "disc protrusion or extrusion." However, it was found that during this devastating process, the patient doesn't feel pain because the disc doesn't contain any pain sensing nerve fibers until you get to the outer 1/3^rd of the disc.

Once the nucleus and damage reaches the outer 1/3^rd of the disc then symptoms begin to occur and it was discovered in studies that a phenomenon called "hyper-innervation" occurs and the whole disc becomes innervated resulting in you feeling all the damage to the disc that went unnoticed before.

Besides the pain you're experiencing from the disc, the bulging herniated, protruding disc causes pressure on the nerves inside the spine resulting in additional, often more debilitating, pain (like sciatica), numbness & tingling, burning, and muscle weakness.

Also the decreases disc height leads to an "approximation" of the joints in your spine... they get closer together and they rub together (stress) which leads to the join "hypertrophy" or enlargement. This is called arthritis. Just like stress on muscles, when you lift weights, causes enlargement of the muscles, when stress on the joints occurs, they enlarge causing even more pressure on the nerves in addition to the pressure the disc causes. Your nerves are caught in an "hour glass" effect as they are squeezed from both sides.

Once this degenerative process gets started, it starts to spread to the "adjacent" discs (discs above and below) and it gets worse and involves more and more discs called Multi-level Disc Degeneration.

Mow once this process begins due to motion dysfunction... it takes time to do all of this damage, which is why age is often blamed. Time IS a factor, as I've said, just not the main cause.

This process can be prevented, slowed, stopped, or even reversed depending on where in the process it is treated. Even spinal conditions, which were once believed to be permanent damage and thought to require surgery, can often be reversed or at the very least improved non-surgically with breakthrough technology in which we specialize.