I. About back pain
Let me ask you, there is a part of our body, it is often ignored because of the usual performance is very low-key, when it protrudes will cause us to pay great attention, what is it?
That is the lumbar intervertebral disc.
Indeed, the lumbar intervertebral disc is a can not ignore the existence, usually must pay attention to its protection and reasonable use, otherwise, wait until it has been too much injustice, jumped out to complain, we will regret, is their carelessness to pay a big price. So, usually do not see the true face of the intervertebral disc in the end contains those secrets? Back pain is a herniated disc? How to treat our lumbar spine? Is the lumbar disc surgery treatment terrible? Today let us uncover the secrets of the lumbar intervertebral discs and effectively prevent and treat lumbar spine diseases.
So, what is the biggest symptom of a lumbar disc problem? Of course it’s back pain. As the saying goes, “standing and talking does not hurt”, if there is no personal experience, the pain of lumbar pain is indefinable. Only those who have experienced low back pain can feel it personally, such as: where is the pain point? Does it hurt badly? When is it the worst? How long does it last? Do you know what causes it?
Generally speaking, low back pain can be felt in the lower back, lumbosacral, sacroiliac and other places, but low back pain is not the same, the pain onset time and pain level vary, and the cause of low back pain itself is very complex and requires further professional examination to determine. However, different attack times can suggest different causes.
No pain in the morning and pain in the evening A herniated lumbar disc is the most common cause of low back pain. The longer you work in a day, the more your back pain intensifies. After a night’s rest and a slight reset of the disc, the back pain is relieved, so patients with herniated discs often have less back pain in the morning, or even no pain at all, but work until after noon when the back pain starts, and the more painful it is in the evening.
The pain caused by inflammation of tissues, such as ankylosing spondylitis, tuberculosis or osteomyelitis, fibrositis, fasciitis, vasculitis, etc., is most painful when you wake up in the morning, and after activity, the painful symptoms are reduced or disappear. Because of the lack of activity during the night, the waste materials produced by metabolism accumulate in the local tissues, stimulating the painful nerves and causing low back pain, and after activity, blood circulation increases, taking away these waste materials, thus reducing pain. Menopausal women may also suffer from low back pain due to plant nerve dysfunction, which is also characterized by being heavy in the morning after waking up and relieved after activity.
No pain in the morning and no pain in the middle of the night If you wake up from a dream in the middle of the night with pain, such back pain may be indicating cancer. Cancer may be primary or metastatic. Benign bone tumors usually do not cause pain. Bone cancer pain is the most intense of all cancer pains. It is characterized by resting pain, the quieter it is, the more painful it is. When activity is opened, the pain is reduced instead. It is presumed that this is because the tumor factor dissipates and no longer compresses the nerves due to activity.
This is the opposite of the symptoms of lumbar muscle strain and lumbar disc herniation, which are more comfortable after massage and percussion.
The back pain caused by other organ diseases also needs our attention. Urinary system infections, kidney lesions, gynecological inflammation in women, pelvic tumors, etc. can cause low back pain, while stomach and duodenal ulcers can sometimes cause radioactive pain in the lower back. These low back pains do not increase with activity and do not disappear with rest, there is no time period. In which time period do you have back pain symptoms mostly occur? You can make a preliminary judgment based on this.
Do you have problems with your lumbar spine? The following several situations, if one belongs to often occur, indicating that the lumbar spine began to appear problems, should pay attention to, go to the hospital to take a lumbar spine film, usually also need to take more care of the waist: if the waist pain, gently cough a few, found that the waist pain aggravated; sleep overnight after the lumbar pain is still not relieved r to the left side when lying like a fetus when the pain still can not be reduced; lying flat sit up, legs because of pain and can not be straight; Lie flat, straighten the knee joints of both legs and lift them up, and the pain is unbearable when they are lifted halfway.
Second, demystify the relationship between lumbar intervertebral discs and back pain.
Today we focus on understanding the low back pain caused by a herniated disc.
1. Know the lumbar intervertebral disc
What kind of component is the lumbar intervertebral disc? Today let us know the true face of the mountain.
The intervertebral disc is the device responsible for shock absorption between the bones of the spine, so it is flexible is its most important feature. The intervertebral disc consists of three structures: the upper and lower cartilage, the fibrous ring as a wall and the gelatinous nucleus pulposus, among which the cartilage is the strongest, the nucleus pulposus is the most elastic, and the fibrous ring is the most easily worn. The lower limit of the time when the “proteoglycans” responsible for maintaining the elasticity of the intervertebral discs start to decrease is 30 years of age. This means that after the age of 30, the intervertebral disc is on the path of gradual degeneration. Survey statistics show that 59.1% of people aged 30-40 in China suffer from cervical and lumbar spondylosis.
What happens to a herniated disc? When the annulus fibrosus is worn, the gelatinous nucleus pulposus overflows and squeezes the space where the nerves live. With the amount of nerve encroachment on the territory, it is further divided into bulging, herniation, and spinal stenosis.
2, four major causes of lumbar disc herniation
So, why does the lumbar disc protrude? Let us analyze the following groups of people susceptible to disc disease what is the reason?
Athletes Office workers Drivers Elderly people
Athletes should be sudden external force caused by lumbar sprain. Normal lumbar intervertebral relationships are elastic and resilient, with a strong resistance to pressure, and can bear 450 kg of pressure without damage. But these forces must be slowly pressed down from the front, if the sudden force or after a lack of exercise suddenly force, it is easy to break through its tolerance limit, triggering lumbar sprain. Office workers should be a long time to bend over the lumbar spine hyperflexion. In our daily activities, the lumbar spine is mostly in flexion, excessive work is equivalent to increase the time of lumbar flexion.
Statistics show that the frequency of lumbar flexion in a day up to three thousand to five thousand times. This excessive and repeated flexion is the most common cause of intervertebral disc lesions. The driver should be vibrating with the car for a long time – it is very easy to trigger lumbar disc herniation due to the bad posture of the back while driving for too long, the uncoordinated height of the seat and steering wheel, and the prolonged jolting of the lumbosacral region.
So the seat should be properly moved to the steering wheel, so that the steering wheel in the case of steering as close to the chest as possible, while leaning back behind the angle of 100 degrees is appropriate. The seat is too high is easy to make the lumbar vertebrae overstretched increased lumbar load, inducing lumbar disc herniation. The elderly have osteoporosis and are prone to sprain.
In addition to the above four reasons, but also pay attention to avoid the waist cold. The waist is especially afraid of cold, if the waist is cold, in order to resist the cold, the muscles of the waist and back spasm, small blood vessels contraction, so that the local blood circulation is reduced, will affect the supply of nutrients to the intervertebral discs, the pressure within the intervertebral discs rise, causing more damage. The girls who love beauty must pay attention to the wind and also the temperature.
Third, the lumbar spine health care
We should not only avoid the triggers of lumbar spine disease, but also take the initiative to fight the defense of lumbar spine health. In fact, the defense of the lumbar spine health is a protracted war, how long is it? A lifetime, and every moment of every day. To put it bluntly, it is the formation of good habits and persistence.
1, correct sitting posture
Sitting with the waist straight, so that the waist and thighs, thighs and calves to maintain 90 degrees.
2.Cultivate the habit of waist health
A, each sitting time about forty minutes, get up and stretching action and hands empty fist lightly tapping the waist.
B, the best way to get up in the morning to move the waist, do “back and forth”, “left and right rotation”, “lazy back” and other actions, so that the waist does not immediately change from a stationary state to increase the waist The movement of the load.
C. Backward. Backward marching is the most appreciated by the lumbar spine. When walking backwards, the two legs alternately step backwards, enhancing the strength of the posterior thigh muscle groups and lumbar back muscle groups, which allows the lumbar ligaments to increase their elasticity, as if they had their own lumbar spine protection belt. The recovery of the function of the bones, muscles and ligaments not only allows the stability of the lumbar spine to increase, but also makes the lumbar spine pain lessen or even disappear. When walking backwards, it is best to walk 60 steps-100 steps per minute for 10 minutes each time.
D, exercise the lower body muscle groups. Strong legs can effectively share the burden of the lower back, stopping and relieving the formation of back pain. Swimming, especially breaststroke can mainly practice these muscle groups. In addition swimming can also guarantee the nutritional supply of interspinal tissues, maintain its elasticity and improve the ability of the spine to resist external shocks.
3, teach you a little waist health tips
A.Arch bridge exercise
With the occiput, both elbows, both heels as the focus point, the waist upward arch. Adhere to about ten seconds slowly relax, and then repeat the action, the number of each time to do not feel tired as degree.
B. Swallow fly exercise
Exercise the upper body and legs should be raised moderately, in the imminent elicitation of lumbar symptoms after the stop continue to raise, adhere to about ten seconds slowly relax, and then repeat the action again, each time the number of do not feel tired as degree.
C. Knock on the waist
After waking up in the morning, please do not immediately get out of bed, first closed eyes for three or five minutes; lie to the left side, raise the right hand to hold an empty fist, with the thumb and forefinger side of the natural vertical direction from the back to knock on the waist, straight down to knock, distribute each empty fist moving distance, knocking a total of seven, just moving to the sacral vertebrae, and then knock again from the waist, cycle three groups; right hand to hold an empty fist, with the palm side of the hand to knock on the spine next to open ten centimeters. Similarly, from the top to the bottom while knocking and moving the empty fist, knock seven times, cycle three groups.
D. Knock on the joints
Hold an empty fist, drop naturally and hit the joints of the pelvis and thighs with the side of the little finger, a group of seven times, do three groups.
Fourth, the treatment of lumbar disc herniation
Scientific prevention is one aspect, for friends who have suffered from lumbar spine disease, what to do?
There are many patients and friends, in the early stages of the disease, just appear lumbar leg pain pay insufficient attention to the situation, thinking that as long as attention to rest can be self-healing. This is actually wrong, because if the lumbar disc herniation causes lumbar leg pain, then as the disease develops, it may also cause more serious consequences, such as numbness, coldness, weakness of the lower limbs, or even quite serious consequences, such as paralysis and large and urinary disorders, which seriously affect the quality of life.
The main manifestation of lumbar disc herniation is sciatica, which needs to be combined with lumbar spine X-ray, CT, MRI or even lumbar spinal canal angiography for a clear diagnosis. If you don’t do these detailed examinations, the treatment will be blind, and if you are conservative, you will not only face poor treatment results, but you can even miss the disease.
So, is conservative treatment for patients with lumbar disc herniation feasible or not? This depends on the specific situation.
Most patients with lumbar disc herniation can be treated by bed rest, lumbar traction, drugs, closure, massage, physiotherapy, acupuncture and other conservative methods, but if the disc protrudes to a certain extent, compressing the nerves or causing more serious complications, surgery is required in a timely manner.
Fear of surgical treatment and blind refusal of surgical treatment is also a common misconception. In lumbar disc herniation, patients with complete herniation, ruptured herniation and free nucleus pulposus can only be cured by surgery, and the earlier the better, otherwise, the loss of nerve function may become permanent, which will bring irreparable damage to the patient.
Is lumbar disc surgery scary? This is really a concern for many patients who need surgery. As mentioned earlier, there are about 300 million people in China who suffer from lumbar spine disorders to varying degrees. The treatment of these diseases has been a problem that medical experts have been trying to explore and solve. Traditional surgical treatment is difficult and risky, and there are also problems such as post-operative recurrence and activity limitation.
As you know, with the improvement of clinical level and the innovation of surgical instruments, the era of minimally invasive surgery has arrived. Minimally invasive surgery is less invasive, more effective, with fewer complications and lower costs. This greatly reduces the risk of surgery and allows more and more patients to be treated in a timely manner. However, there are many types of minimally invasive surgery of the lumbar spine, each with its own indications. Early minimally invasive techniques have problems such as a single method, superficial treatment, poor long-term treatment, and incomplete treatment, so it is also important to find out which minimally invasive it is when choosing a procedure.