In this video, chiropractor Dr. Troy Dreiling demonstrates what it is and how a bulging disc acts.
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Video Transcription
Hey, it’s Dr. Troy from Zenaptic Chiropractic.
A lot of people ask me or come in and say, hey I have a bulging disc or they ask me what’s a bulging disc, do I have a disc bulge? I always look to say, what is causing the disc to bulge?
If we look at the structure the disc is just going to follow the bone so the disc sits in here. It’s a gelatinous substance, it’s kind of like jello. If the bones are in alignment the jello is going to be nice and square like an ice cream sandwich. If the ice cream is soft and you push down on it you are going to get the bulge or the disc to squirt out to one side, not completely that would be a rupture but you’ll get the disc to bulge.
So people always ask me, do I have a bulged disc, is it painful? The answer to that is discs don’t have pain fiber, what causes pain is the disc bulge can push on a nerve root and cause neurological issues. If you’re having back pain and you think it’s a disc bulge it’s probably not associated with that
Usually what we’ll find is the vertebra and alignment; now if the spine goes this way which way does the disc bulge? It’s going to bulge this way, do you see that? It’s going to bulge to my left, if we go this way it’s going to bulge to my right, and if we go this way flex forward it’s going to bulge back.
Now true, that could put pressure on the nerves and cause pain but usually, the pain is caused from the misalignment. It’s irritating the joint capsule, that’s where all the pain fibers are.
How do you correct that? Well, obviously you could take some medication, inject it but that doesn’t’ fix it. You have to adjust it, you have got to use a manual technique to adjust and re-establish function.
Now watch. If I take a disc that’s bulged to the back and we do this to it the disc is going to go that way. Who cares it’s not putting pressure on any of the soft tissue and the structures and then if we can get the joints functioning again; that’s the number one cause of back pain, spinal joint dysfunction.
Hopefully, that answers your question, do I have this bulge? They did an MRI on over two thousand nonsymptomatic patients and they found over seventy-one percent of them had disc bulges and no history of back pain. Seventy-one percent of them have disc bulges.
What does that tell you? Discs don’t cause back pain. It can cause leg pain and other neurological things but they don’t cause back pain. It’s usually the joint capsule at the set joint in the spine.
So that stuff we can check for you, happy to help. Free consultation, anybody who wants to get checked to see what’s going on. There are a lot of test you can do to determine what your problem is and the best course of action to do it.
This is Dr. Troy, free consultation if you call (360)260-6903.
