What else is there?

What else is there to treat my back pain, disc disease?

MEDICAL SYSTEM: Let's confront the facts:  Medically, there is a standard approach to treatment, but it's all directed to covering up symptoms, rather than actually fixing anything.

If you go to a medical specialist, you will  certainly be examined, x-rayed, and perhaps sent for an MRI or CT-Scan. Once the UN-usual is ruled out, e.g., tumors, infections, fractures, and the like, you will be given medication. This  can be in the form of muscle  relaxants, pain killers, anti-inflammatory or steroids. Without the Chiropractic  care, all these do is either mask the real problem while it gets worse, or make you so dopey you don;t really care if you're hurt. Then you will generally be sent to a physical therapist for a course of six weeks of therapy. The PT will  usually give you some combination of massage, ultrasound, electrical simulation, hot and or cold packs, traction and exercises.  Chiropractors call this "shake and bake".

SURGERY: When you are still in pain at the end of this merry-go-round, a surgeon will be called in and you will be evaluated for surgical intervention. This could be just an epidural (which is an injection with cortisone [steroid] and lidocaine). Or, it could be something more intrusive, like disc surgery.

The dirty little secret of all these  procedures is that they all lead to one conclusion; surgery, eventually.  and there are two more dirty littel secrets in spinal surgery:

A.- NEXT DISC SYNDROME:  The domino effect....  once they cut into one disc, it weakens that disc further and the forces then start working on the next dis above it; and,
B.- RISK factor for Spinal surgery No. 2?:  Spinal surgery number 1 is the GREATEST risk factor for a second surgery.

ACUPUNCTURE:  In back pain patients, acupuncture is a great means of controlling pain, and reducing inflammation, but just like the above medical approach, it does NOTHING to fix anything!   After all, if the cause of your pain is a locked up joint, then all the pain killers in the world, and all the acupuncture needles in the world cannot move the  joint.

PHYSICAL THERAPY/Exercises:   Your muscle move GROUPS of joints. Thus if one pair of joints within a group is locked up and irritating a nerve root, all the exercises are not going to move that pair that is rusted tight. Oh, of course there  are a few cases in which  one can jar it loose accidentally, but these are  few and far between.

So what is left?  CHIROPRACTIC - the only means to actually fix this, and the only way to avoid surgery.

Only a highly skilled Chiropractor  can specifically move a locked up joint pair and keep it mobile.

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