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What Is Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD) and How Is It Treated?

Age can cause this, but most of the time, it is caused by some sort of trauma to the spine...

Symptoms range from person to person, and they can also be affected by the particular location of the spinal injury. People with lower back injuries can experience numbness and tingling in the legs and buttocks... The symptoms can also become as severe as temporary paralysis in one or both legs...

In some cases, DDD has been noted by physicians as a hereditary disease. However, not all doctors agree with this and there have been no conclusive studies conducted to provide this theory with any validity. Degenerative disc disease is most commonly seen in the elderly. Rarely is it seen…

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  Degenerative Disc Disease 101

Do you believe that your lower back pain is being caused by degenerative disc disease? It’s important to start your treatment with an accurate diagnosis. Fortunately, there are a number of effective treatments for degenerative disc disease.

 How Back Pain Took Over the World

The biggest cause of disability around the world is surprisingly banal.

 The best $29.95 I ever spent: A lumbar pillow

From ice or heat to support accessories, rehab, steroid injections, and surgery, industries and medical subspecialties have sprouted around people’s back trouble. Of these measures, lumbar support — designed to treat pain of the lumbar, or lower, spine — comes in several forms, including back braces, belts, and other orthotics. The evidence for use of these methods in treating low back pain is sketchy at best, but the effectiveness of pillow-like chair attachments has been examined.

 Why Degenerative Disc Disease Surgery Doesn’t Work

If you or someone you know are living with degenerative disc disease and haven’t gotten relief from conservative treatment methods, surgery was probably the next recommendation. Degenerative disc disease surgery is generally how this condition is treated when methods like exercise, physical therapy, or medication fail to provide relief. The problem is that surgery is rarely able to provide lasting relief from degenerative disc disease pain.

 Why Running May Be Good for Your Back

People who regularly run or walk briskly appear to have healthier discs in their spines than people who do not exercise, according to one of the first studies to closely examine links between movement and disc health.

Articles of Interest

Degenerative Disc Disease: Debunking Myths

Many people believe incorrectly that degenerative disc disease only affects older people. While this condition certainly can affect the elderly, it is most often seen in people between the ages of 25 and 55.

For Spinal Disks, Waiting Appears Equal to Surgery

With the new results, it is clear that the risk of waiting “is, if not extraordinarily small, at least off the radar screen,” Dr. Carragee said.

Foraminal Stenosis 101

The condition can be caused by a number of things, any of which can narrow the foraminal opening and put pressure on the nerves passing through to the spinal canal.

Lumbar Degenerative Disc Disease Ultimate Things You Should Know

The degenerative cascade can lead to disc bulging, development of bone spurs (or osteophytes), and loss of disc space height and/or alignment, which can cause nerve impingement. DDD can also lead to degenerative instability, the loss of the ability of the spine under physiologic loads to maintain its pattern of normal movement due to disc degeneration

Lumbar Degenerative Disc Disease: Current and Future Concepts of Diagnosis and Management

Low back pain as a result of degenerative disc disease imparts a large socioeconomic impact on the health care system. Traditional concepts for treatment of lumbar disc degeneration have aimed at symptomatic relief by limiting motion in the lumbar spine, but novel treatment strategies involving stem cells, growth factors, and gene therapy have the theoretical potential to prevent, slow, or even reverse disc degeneration.

Needless treatments: spinal fusion surgery for lower back pain is costly and there’s little evidence it’ll work

There is little high-quality evidence to support the use of spinal fusion for most back-related conditions, including spinal stenosis. And there is disagreement between surgeons on when spinal fusion surgery should be performed, not only for back pain but also for more acute conditions such as tumours and spine fractures.

Pro athletes make fixing back pain look easy. It isn’t

What often goes unmentioned is that, after two years, the outcome for those who opt for surgery and those who pursue conservative care is essentially the same. For most people, after a few weeks or months, the protruding, pain-causing disc tissue shrivels up and disintegrates, and the pain fades away.

The Medical Riddle of Steve Kerr’s Back Pain

Golden State Warriors coach’s herniated disk highlights question of whether to get surgery or try rehab.

To Fix That Pain In Your Back, You Might Have To Change The Way You Sit

So maybe Sherer is right. Maybe the problem, when it comes to back pain, isn't how much Americans are sitting, but the way we're sitting.

Why Back Pain Is Nearly Non-Existent In Some Populations

There are a few places, though, where back pain hardly exists, mostly indigenous cultures far removed from modern life.

Resources

Discseel Procedure

While mild sedation relaxes you, and after your Annulogram identifies your discs’ tears, your Physician seals all your tears by injecting Fibrin, an FDA-Approved biologic. Nothing else, including stem cells, can do this. Fibrin’s natural healing abilities have been known for centuries, it just took the Discseel® Procedure to bring them to you.

Spine-Health

Despite what the name suggests, degenerative disc disease is neither considered a true disease nor does it progressively worsen with time. Discs naturally stiffen with use and age, and everyone experiences some disc degeneration. Degenerative disc disease refers only to the condition of painful disc degeneration, and it is not uncommon for symptoms to alleviate as the spine gradually stabilizes.

A Useful Treatment for the “Dreaded” Degenerative Disc Disease

It seems like every patient has it — the dreaded degenerative disc disease (DDD) with low back pain. As we all know, DDD is not a disease, and much to the surprise of our patients, it is just part of the normal aging process starting as early as age 30. This does not mean your patients don’t experience back pain, but how to treat the problem is another matter. Fortunately, there is radiofrequency ablation of the lumbar spine

Johns Hopkins

Most of the time, disk disease happens as a result of aging and the normal break down that occurs within the disk. Sometimes, severe injury can cause a normal disk to herniate. Injury may also cause an already herniated disk to worsen.