|
|
disc argument
|
Logged in as: Guest
|
|
Users viewing this topic:
none
|
|
Login  | |
|
disc argument - March 4, 2008 10:19:14 AM
|
|
|
bbronk
Posts: 26
Joined: March 3, 2008
From: CA
Status: offline
|
Patients come to me convinced a disc is pinching a nerve. Their doctor showed it to them right there on MRI, and what can I possibly do about that? It’s simple, the disc is irrelevant. It only appears the disc is pinching a nerve. I will prove to you it is not.
Here are the facts: (this is common knowledge if you've been reading your journals.)
1. MRI’s of people who have never had an incidence of low back pain in their life, show they have herniated discs.
2. The disc can herniate to the left, looking like it’s pinching the left nerve root, yet the pain travels down the right leg.
3. Discs can shrink or disappear on subsequent MRI, all on their own, yet symptoms remain.
4. Half the population over age forty have a herniated disc or other defect deemed significant on x-ray or MRI yet do not suffer chronic pain.
So engrained is disc theory it has become a snap judgement.
If you have a herniated disc and have no pain it is said to be asymptomatic, or not causing symptoms.
But if you are in pain and a herniated disc is seen, you can be sure it will be blamed on the disc.
I submit to you the disc is irrelevant. It’s not whether the disc is symptomatic or not, it’s whether your muscles are symptomatic or not.
In an article, ‘A knife in the back’, The New Yorker, 4/02, the author gets orthopedic surgeons, sometimes speaking on the condition of anonymity, to admit the following:
“When I began in spine there were a handful of fellowships in the country. There are now over eighty fellowship programs in spine surgery. That means each year more and more specialists are being trained . . . We have new toys to play with - all sorts of screws, rods, and cages. And at the same time, we still don’t have a clue where the pain is coming from in the vast majority of chronic sufferers.”
“If you have a screwdriver, everything looks like a screw . . . There will be a lot of people doing the wrong thing for back pain for a long time, until we finally figure it out. I just hope that we don’t hurt too many people in the process.”
“In medicine, if you are able to stick a needle into a person, you are reimbursed at a much better rate by the insurance company. So there is a tremendous drive to perform invasive procedures. At the hospital where I was a fellow training in 1993, discograms were rarely done . . . over the last few years they have come into voge. Surgeons and others order them routinely.”
Discography
Often people have more than one herniated disc, and whether it’s profit motive, or they really don’t know which one they want to operate on, a procedure called discography is performed.
A needle is pressed through your muscles into the edge of each disc with increasing pressure in an effort to reproduce the familiar pain you have been suffering.
The results of discography are controversial and misleading but here’s the point: what they are looking for in the test, reproducing the familiar pain you’ve been suffering? That is exactly what I do every time I fix a “disc” case.
Without fail, at some point in the process the patient will exclaim, “That’s it, that’s my problem!”, and I am no where near a disc.
Is back pain all in your head?
Dr. John Sarno, a famous medical doctor on the east coast, and author of the book ‘Healing Back Pain, The Mind Body Connection’, makes the case that since the hard evidence of back pain doesn’t add up, the pain must therefore be all in your head, the result of repressed emotions and anger.
He states, “In the thousands of patients I have examined through the years I have rarely found the involved muscles to be in spasm.”
And that is it! What we’ve all been missing - the UNDERLYING SPASM PATTERN.
It is quite understandable, the way we are taught to feel muscles, nothing sticks out, the underlying pattern is easily missed.
Typical forms of deep muscle therapy including, rolfing, acupressure, active / myofascial release etc. work at times but are not able to fix the tough cases. They are over pressing and lack the refinement necessary to unravel advanced spasm patterns.
A disc pinching a nerve? It would also appear the living room couch is pinching the electrical chord to the lamp, but it doesn’t.
|
|
|
|
|
RE: disc argument - March 4, 2008 10:55:53 AM
|
|
|
proud
Posts: 951
Joined: March 22, 2006
Status: offline
|
Bronk you fool. This disc paradigm has been previously discussed on here verbatim. The limitations and potential pitfalls of patho-anatomical explanations for pain are well understood here.
Now save further embarrasment....stop typing.
And let's ban the infomercial shall we?
|
|
|
|
|
RE: disc argument - March 4, 2008 11:29:53 AM
|
|
|
PTupdate.com
Posts: 1490
Joined: October 8, 2001
From: Pittsburgh, PA USA
Status: offline
|
Jesus, this guys is spreading like a virus through the site
bbronk: Why don't we find a good RehabEdge member that lives near you, and you can videotape one of your techniques for us to preview, and perhaps try. I am always open for trying new things, and if we can't post the video here, I"d gladly put it on my own site for FREE. We'll try it.
So, any RehabEdge members near this guy in CalyforniA, especially one with some nice musculoskeletal issues?
_____________________________
John M. Duffy, PT
Board Certified Orthopaedic Clinical Specialist
www.PTupdate.com
|
|
|
|
|
RE: disc argument - March 4, 2008 2:39:34 PM
|
|
|
ptim
Posts: 68
Joined: September 26, 2006
Status: offline
|
not so much a virus, but an irritating rash!
|
|
|
|
|
RE: disc argument - March 4, 2008 3:08:26 PM
|
|
|
kiwi PT
Posts: 75
Joined: December 2, 2007
From: MI, USA (dreaming of New Zealand)
Status: offline
|
Duff,
Did you look at his site and his warning to potential pateints?
"
- you may be sore to the touch up to a week. - you may bruise"
I for one am not BBBBBB (begging to be bruised by Brian Bronk)
However if a braver sole than me is willing to try I'd love to see that video.
Kyle PT
_____________________________
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
Mark Twain
|
|
|
|
 New Messages |
 No New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/ New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/o New Messages |
 Locked w/ New Messages |
 Locked w/o New Messages |
|
 Post New Thread
Reply to Message
Post New Poll
Submit Vote
Delete My Own Post
Delete My Own Thread
Rate Posts |
|
0.094
|
Printable Version
