(Lower Back Pain Continued)

stop there and attack the disc with their arsenal of prescriptions. It seems that it is very rare that they will stop to ask how the disc began to bulge in the first place. There are instances when a person can walk around comfortably with a 5mm bulge while someone else is suffering excruciating pain with only a 1 mm bulge. Why is that? Is the bulge really the true cause of pain? Even when I agree that the bulging disc is putting pressure on nerves resulting in pain or numbness, I am still going to look at it as a proverbial "last straw" on top of an accumulation of dysfunctions. When you take into account that most bulging discs are on one side of the spine, the case for muscle imbalances and joint misalignments grows stronger.

One day Terry came into my office complaining of back pain and leg numbness. With the exception of surgery, she had already undergone every prescription from the scenario above. Her MRI had shown that her L 4-5 disc was bulging. She had taken medication and two epidural shots and neither had provided her with any relief. In physical therapy she did the standard stretching/strengthening exercises along with e-stim and massage on her low back. She told me that every session was identical and that her alignment was never addressed. She was just treated like every other low back patient. Let me say that I know that all physical therapy clinics do not operate this way, but I have heard this story enough to know that there quite a few out there.

Terry had grown frustrated and told her physical therapists that she could perform the exercises at home since she was so familiar with them. The exercises that Terry did were what we call "strengthening