Let me shine a light for you in the darkness of the back pain night. Disc bulges and injuries are not forever, but there are some important things to know about treatment.

Everyone has his or her own expertise in life. For some people they are experts in sitting on the couch with a TV remote and the pizza restaurant on speed dial, others win Olympic Gold. Whatever it is that you do a lot of, you should become good at.

I have studied and treated human beings for a couple of decades. I’ve spent long days and nights in university libraries, late nights in the dissection rooms with cadavers for company, and have amassed a professional career of treating people in pain. I’m good at this and now I’m trying to educate a whole new breed of fitness professionals to become good at fitness rehabilitation. So, let me shine a light for you in the darkness of the back pain night.

Disc “Bulges” Are Not Forever

Disc bulges and injuries can go away without surgery. Even really big disc injuries like the one pictured. Below is a before and after MRI of a patient of mine, who had a huge injury. Look at the after photo and you can see what the spinal canal should look like, then the before and you can see this is a big one.

It looks like someone sneezed on his MRI, there is that much junk in the spinal canal.

Three months from that MRI to total freedom from disc injury is what he achieved.

After an Injury Training Should Be Expected to Return to Normal

I’ve had quite a few patients with disc injuries this big and thousands with lesser size injuries, and I’m close to a 100% success rate in getting them back to whatever they wanted to do. In the case of the guy in the before and after scans, he was back into the gym doing calf raises with 1,000lbs within six months. This was after he got back the control of his calf muscle due to the nerve injury concurrent to the disc injury.

No, I did not tell him to do those calf raises. It is just what he wanted to do, and I had no problem with his personal choice. I just showed him the tools to achieve his goals as the disc resolved. This is the greatest skill in low back injury treatment – getting the patient back to 100% of pre-injury function. It takes specific exercise application, including strength exercise both for hypertrophy and skill.

Once the Injury Is Healed, You Do Not Need Ongoing Treatment

Don’t let anyone tell you a disc injury is for life. I’ve got files full of MRI evidence of disc injuries being healed, and they don’t need monthly “adjustments” to keep them “in line” either. These people may naturally incur other injuries in the course of their pursuits, but once I solve a disc injury I expect it to stay that way, as long as the patient keeps doing the work I prescribe (forever), then they can go ahead and pursue the dreams and goals they had interrupted.

The specific exercises I prescribe will vary with each patient and are related to each personal history, presentation, lifestyle, and occupation. So I can’t give you a cookie-cutter treatment protocol for everyone today, but I just wish to show you that even big problems can be solved. It’s just a matter of finding the right answer and not giving up.

Pitured above is an example of the disc in the healing process. The balloon-like bulge is being healed and will return to normal. The process is a bit too complex to describe fully in this brief article, but when I teach courses on low back rehabilitation, I go through this process in detail.

Okay, so you now know even big disc injuries are not to be feared. They can be healed totally without lasting deficit. It then requires the perfect combination of passive, active, and neural rehabilitation strengthening exercises and progressions to take the patient back to optimum recovery and return to excellence of performance. 
(None of which, by the way, requires you to pull your damn belly button in!)

Till next time…

Stay BIG!!!

Andrew