Latest Research Rocks the Conventional Wisdom About Disc Damage

Back pain is one of the most serious epidemics facing our country today.

It’s a common cause of disability, leads to opiate use, contributes to depression, and sucks up a large portion of our nation’s health care budget.

Back pain is a huge public health problem.  And the medical world doesn’t have a good track record in preventing it or treating it.

Negative Thinking about Your Intervertebral Discs

When you have long-standing or recurring low back pain, especially if you’re over 40, sooner or later you’re told that disc damage is part of your problem.

Disc damage has a lot of negative implications.  It means:

• the cartilage of the disc has deteriorated from wear-and-tear
• the disc can’t bind as much water and gets dried out
• the disc has lost some of its height
• it no longer does a good job of guiding spinal movement, and
• irritation of the disc causes inflammation which leads to pain and nerve impingement

The conventional wisdom has always been that once your discs have degenerated the damage can’t be reversed.  Then the best you can hope for is that your body can devise some sort of internal work-around to minimize the pain despite the loss of disc height.

There are good reasons why the conventional wisdom seems to make sense.  After all,

• disc degeneration and low back pain are very common
• they tend to get worse with age
• the discs are constantly under pressure, and
• the disc doesn’t have its own blood supply to bring in the nutrients needed for healing – it can only suck in fluids passively from its surroundings

That’s the bad news.

But there’s good news too.

Doctors have been using Flexion-Distraction treatment to decompress the disc of the low back for more than twenty years and getting outstanding results with low back pain patients.

In 2010, a research team at UC San Francisco reviewed 30 low back pain patients treated with lumbar decompression.  Their average age was 65.  Researchers charted the degree of symptom relief each patient achieved and also looked at before-and-after CT scans.

Over a 6-week treatment period, average pain scores dropped from 6.2 to 1.6 on a scale of 10.

And their discs gained about 17% in height.

It’s as if the treatment turned back the clock of disc degeneration 10-15 years or even more.

Looking for These Positive Results for Your Own Intervertebral Discs?

Dr. Lavine brings more than 30 years experience to his 6-week treatment program for low back pain.  It includes Flexion-Distraction plus other hands-on treatment methods, nutritional support, and therapeutic exercise.

You don’t even need MRI’s or a CT scan to qualify.  A few simple physical examination procedures can determine if you’re likely to get good results.