Millions of Americans deal with low back pain on a daily basis. Young to middle-aged individuals are often affected with degenerative disc disease, which can cause back pain on a daily basis. It may have some days where it’s not bothersome at all and others where the patient cannot get out of bed.

The intervertebral disc is a structure that is made up of 80% water normally and sits between the bones of the spine at every level going up and down. Each one acts as a shock absorber and is very effective when a person walks or runs or jumps at dispersing those forces properly if healthy.

Studies have shown that over 40% of individuals over the age of 40 have some level of degenerative disc disease. It may not be painful at all and in fact in most individuals there is no back pain even if degenerate disc disease is present on x-rays or MRI.

For individuals who do have horrible back pain from degenerative disc disease the initial question to answer is “Why is this problem affecting me?”

Those who develop degenerative disc disease do not always have it from an injury. It may be luck of the draw from genetics causing dehydration and degeneration of one or several disc spaces leading to loss of height and bulging discs and pain.

In other patients, there may have actually been a trauma to the back which led to degenerative disc disease subsequently. The person may have also had a herniation of a disk with subsequent surgery and degenerative changes progressively afterwards. This is extremely common.

Initial treatment of back pain from a degenerative disc should involve the basics such as activity avoidance and over-the-counter pain medications. The person should avoid the activity that incites the pain, such as if jogging makes it worse then maybe switch over to swimming or cycling.

The anti-inflammatory medications or over-the-counter can make a huge difference in handling the back pain properly. They should always be taken to court the manufacturers dosing recommendations, as taking too much can lead to an ulcer.

Additional treatments if these initial parts don’t work would include treatment with the chiropractor, physical therapy, massage, acupuncture or spinal decompression therapy. These treatments can be simultaneously put into action think and work very well while at the same time having a low risk row profile.

For instance, chiropractic treatment has been shown to have over an 85% satisfaction rate in America and also a very high level of lasting results. Spinal decompression therapy has been shown to have over 85% effectiveness for good to excellent results. Spinal decompression therapy is low risk, highly effective, and cost less than 5% of that of spinal surgery.

Physical therapy can help individuals with core strengthening and lumbar stabilization along with active and passive ranges of motion. The home program can also be talked to the patient which can help reduce future episodes of back pain.

Along with these treatments, seeing in interventional pain doctor can help immensely. Chronic opiates for low back pain is not the best idea, as the risks are substantial. They can be utilized however as a short-term option effectively to decrease acute exacerbations of back pain.

Injection treatments for low back pain may work exceptionally well. One treatment that is not used much anymore his burning inside part of the disc which was known as intra-diskal electric thermal treatments.

Some pain doctors will inject steroid medication and numbing medicine into the disc itself and this has a fairly low risk to it but the benefit has not been truly shown. Along with degenerative disc disease, individuals often have facet related pain due to the abnormal motion.

For this reason, facet treatments such as facet injections and radiofrequency ablation often provide excellent benefit. There are some stem cell clinical trials being performed with stem cell injections into the intervertebral disc, and this is showing some promise.

These treatments utilize fine themselves or in conjunction have shown to work well for the gender disc disease. Aerobic exercise has been shown to probably be the best option. Over 85% of patients with degenerative disc disease are able to successfully avoid surgery.

Other than these nonoperative treatments, surgery for a degenerative disc is truly a last resort option. The outcomes for surgery tend to be rolled the dice for degenerative disc disease, and the person may only get rid of part of the pain or be worse off than before.

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