If you’ve already seen a doctor for bulging disc treatment, then you probably know that the first thing most health care providers will prescribe are different medications. But is this the most beneficial option for your condition? How effective are these medications anyway, and are there any side effects that you need to worry about?
These are the questions this article will answer for you. First of all, let’s mention the types of medications that are usually recommended.
In most cases, a physician will recommend an anti-inflammatory medication, a muscle relaxer, a pain-reliever, or some combination of the three.
In order to understand what these different medications do, you first have to have a basic understanding of what is occurring when you have a herniated disc, and how the pain is being caused.
The spinal discs are cushions that separate each set of bones within the spine. They are actually a special type of ligament, and besides their function of cushioning the bones, they also help to hold the bones together and help to maintain a proper alignment of the spine.
Each disc is composed of a firm outer covering called the annulus, and a soft jelly center called the nucleus. The annulus itself is composed of multiple layers of cartilage, which makes it strong.
When a person develops a herniated disc, what is really occurring is that one or more of the layers of cartilage that make up the outer covering of the disc become damaged and torn. This creates a weakness in the wall of the disc, and the jelly will start to shift from the center into the area of weakness.
This leads to a “bulge” in the wall of the disc, which is where the condition gets its most common name – a bulging disc.
What’s interesting about this condition, though, is that the spinal nerves are located directly behind each disc. And in fact, because of how close the nerves are to the disc, it’s very common for the bulge in the wall of the disc to apply pressure to these nerves.
This leads to a chain reaction called “inflammation.” What this means is that the body knows that something is not right because there’s pressure on the nerves. So, blood will be rushed to the injured area, because blood contains fresh oxygen and nutrients for healing.
Although this may sound good, in this case it just leads to more pain. There isn’t much room for these nerves to start with, so if you send a whole lot of blood to the area, it will swell up, become very hot, and apply more pressure to the nerves. This just leads to even more pain.
So, to make a long story short, this is the reason that these medications are recommended. An anti-inflammatory will slow the rush of blood to the area and reduce the swelling that is applying more pressure to the nerve.
A muscle relaxer is sometimes recommended because the nerve pressure will lead to muscle spasms in the part of the spine that’s affected. This just causes the muscles to relax.
The pain-reliever will numb the nerves and reduce your pain level.
Although all of this sounds great at first, the fact of the matter is that medications are really only successful about 30% of the time. They may lead to temporary pain relief, but they usually don’t help for the long-term.
In fact, some of these medications can lead to other complications if taken for too long a period of time. Problems such as liver and kidney damage are very typical with these medications.
The reason these aren’t helpful in most cases is because they are all designed to focus on the affected nerve – they do absolutely nothing for the cause of the problem which is the bulging disc itself. You can numb the nerve, reduce the inflammation, and help the muscles relax all you want, but if you don’t address the cause of the problem, the pain will return.
The video above is 1 in a series of 20 that I’ve made to address the most frequently asked questions that people have about treatments for a herniated disc. If you’d like to see all 20 videos in this series, you can click the following link (bulging disc treatment).
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