Symptoms of Degenerative Disc Disease

Degenerative disc disease (DDD) can affect any part of the spine, but it most commonly affects the low back (lumbar spine) or neck (cervical spine). Where you have pain will depend on what region of your spine has the disc degeneration.

Generally, people with degenerative disc disease have chronic back or neck pain. Sometimes, though, pain will flare up—that’s called an acute episode. The main symptom, though, is pain, so you should pay attention to it and what makes it better or worse.

With DDD, you may notice pain patterns such as:

• More pain when sitting for a long time, bending, lifting, or twisting
• Less pain when walking or running
• Less pain if you change positions frequently
• Less pain when you lie down

It’s important to treat your back pain properly. Seek medical attention if your pain persists—and seek immediate attention if you have any of the emergency signs listed below.

Warning Signs You Need Immediate Help

• Pain is getting worse
• Disabling pain
• Leg weakness, pain, numbness, or tingling
• Loss of bowel or bladder control

Considering Injections for Back Pain? Here’s the Research

Does injection therapy for back pain relief really work? Johns Hopkins weights the risks and benefits. 

Authors of a systematic review published in the journal Spine took a look at 18 randomized, controlled trials of the effectiveness of injection therapy in nearly 1,200 people with subacute (lasting longer than one month) or chronic (lasting for three months or more) low back pain. Epidural, facet joint, and trigger point injections were reviewed. The studies analyzed excluded people who experienced leg pain and/or muscle weakness due to spinal nerve compression (radiculopathy). 

That means that in nearly two thirds of the studies, there was little evidence to suggest that injections were any more effective than placebo in providing short-term pain relief. In addition, none of the studies evaluated long-term effectiveness. 

In spite of these findings, experts believe that it is still possible that certain subgroups of people with lingering low back pain could benefit from injection therapy. However, better-designed clinical trials are needed to determine just who those patients may be. 

In the meantime, since injection therapy does appear to benefit some people, your doctor may suggest it as an option, particularly if other conservative therapies such as physical therapy have not been helpful and surgery is your next step. 

Risks and benefits: Overall, injection therapy is a safe procedure, but adverse effects do sometimes occur. For example, nine of the 18 studies in the Spine review reported side effects, such as headache, dizziness, burning or tingling sensation, and nausea, in small numbers of people.   

Injection therapy is not suitable if you are susceptible to excessive bleeding or are taking anticoagulants (drugs that reduce the formation of blood clots). In addition, people experiencing pain due to infection or certain forms of cancer should not receive injections with steroids, since these drugs can weaken the immune system.

Plagued by continuous low back pain, your genes could be the culprit. A new study now reveals that low back pain from disc disease could be inherited.

Researchers examined two million Utah residents health and family history information and found 1,264 diagnoses of lower spine disease linked with herniated or degenerating discs. Disc disease is one of the most common reasons for continual back pain

People who had an immediate family member like parent or sibling with disc associated low back pain had four times more the chance to have low back pain.

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Don’t Let Chronic Back Pain Burn out your Brain

You keep your engine well-oiled and tuned up… and day after day it efficiently propels your car along from Point A to Point B. Never a complaint.

Until one day the clutch snaps. Something has gone wrong in the transmission and suddenly you’re forced to use first gear to get around until you can get it fixed. In the meanwhile, your engine strains along at super-high RPMs.

You’d better get that problem fixed soon or you risk burning out your engine just driving around town.

Chronic pain does the same thing to your brain.

We know that pain is the body’s way of telling the brain, “Something is wrong. Fix it now.” But when that pain continues unchecked, your brain goes into overload.

According to researchers at the Feinberg School of Medicine, a comparison of those with chronic back pain and pain-free subjects showed on functional MRIs that even very simple tasks cause those neurons to fire up… but only the pain-free subject’s neurons deactivated back to their normal state afterwards.

As those neurons continue to fire, they work themselves to the point of exhaustion – and die. Another study showed that chronic back pain shrinks the gray matter of your brain as much as 11%. That’s the equivalent of 10-20 years of aging!

Now before you run and grab a Tylenol to stop the pain and save your brain, you may want to hear about a brand new study out of Spain. Researchers there just found that higher levels of acetaminophen is neurotoxic in rats. Extrapolated out to people, they believe it may kill our brain cells too – even within the upper end of the normal dosage schedule.

Besides, ignoring the problem by masking it with drugs isn’t going to help you any more than sticking an index card in front of the gauge on your dashboard will protect your car’s engine from a broken clutch. You’ve either got to address the problem or face a complete breakdown at some point.

That’s why if you have a problem with your clutch you’ll take your car to a mechanic. And if you’re fighting chronic back pain, you’ll find the solution by calling the Vancouver Spinal Decompression Center for a complimentery consultation at 604-984-4601.

Traditional Open Back Surgery Fails 74% of the Time

After two years, just 25 percent of those who had surgery had actually returned to work. That’s compared to 67 percent of patients who didn’t have surgery. In what might be the most troubling study finding, researchers determined that there was a 41 percent increase in the use of painkillers, specifically opiates, in those who had surgery.

“This study provides clear evidence that for many patients, fusion surgeries designed to alleviate pain from degenerating discs don’t work,” says the study’s lead author, Dr. Nguyen, a researcher at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.

For the last 4 years, The Vancouver Spinal Decompression Center has been the leader in non-invasive spinal decompression therapy for treatment lumbar disc herniation, degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, bulging disc and failed back syndrome.  For more information on this treatment, visit The Vancouver Spinal decompression Center.