What You Should Know About Low Back Pain Disc Degeneration

There comes a time in life when your skeleton and your articulations start to get fragile and low back pain disc degeneration can set in. Older people for example of the age of 60 or above often start to complain about pain centered in their lower back. This may be linked to a condition that is referred to as disk degeneration.

What is disk degeneration all about?

Your spinal column relies on disks between each of the vertebrae for movement and for flexibility. These disks may suffer injury or even breakage for a variety of reasons, including accidents, old age or particular diseases. When this happens not only might you feel pain in the area of the lower back, but also slight numbness in your legs.

It’s a situation that also exists to varying degrees. Disks can be damaged or even broken without causing specific pain. However, if a damaged disk starts to protrude or be pushed out of its place between two vertebrae, this leads to the classical condition of the slipped disk, or as it is technically known by doctors the herniated disc.

Reasons for disc degeneration

It is wear and tear of one sort or another that will cause most cases of low back pain disc degeneration. Bones and articulations are constantly acting as supports or indeed shock absorbers, and the same is true of disks between vertebrae. Sometimes, the wear and tear has gone so far that it only takes a very slight movement to then trigger a slipped disk.

Who suffers from disk degeneration?

In the first instance, it is those people whose bones and joints have suffered a high degree of wear and damage. This may have come about for different reasons: age is one of them, and is entirely natural; being overweight is another causal element; and being a keen or enthusiastic athlete also accelerates wear and tear on the disks in the spinal column.

What treatment can be applied for disc degeneration?

Options for treatment fall into one of two categories: a sufferer from disk’s degeneration can undergo surgery; or it is possible to treat the case with non-surgical treatments. In surgery, often reserved for cases where disks have taken an abnormal amount of punishment, the disks that can no longer fulfill their role, are replaced by a metal plates.

Physical therapy and proper exercise are the recommendations for a non-surgical solution. For people who are suffering from a slipped disk, the first action is typically to get some rest. The next one is to gently strengthen the muscles that act on and support the spinal column. It’s a gradual process that needs to be done in conjunction with advice from your doctor.

Painkillers are often accessible to people with herniated or ruptured disks. Although they may bring short-term relief, it is important to avoid any dependency on such medications. The reason is two-fold: dependency can become one of the uglier forms of addiction; the continued use of pain killers for low back pain disk degeneration can also mean an increase in undesirable side effects on the patient’s body.