If you’re like most people dealing with this condition, you get frustrated with the treatment options for a bulging disc that are available to you. Many people go to their physician and quickly realize that the treatments available to them just aren’t successful in most cases.

Most doctors will start by prescribing medications for this condition (usually a combination of pain-relievers, muscle relaxers, and anti-inflammatories). Unfortunately, these only help about 30% of the time, and when they do help, the benefits usually wear off when you stop taking them, so you’re left back at square one.

Pain injections are another option, and are often recommended when the pain is severe. Injections such as steroids or epidurals are very common, and although they tend to help in many cases, this relief is usually short-lived.

Physical therapy is the next step, which tends to have a better success rate than the previous two treatments. However, what they fail to tell you is that this problem usually returns if you discontinue your exercise program.

Finally, surgery is the last resort. When all other treatment for a bulging disc fails, this is normally the recommendation. Why do they save this for last? Because the success rate is very low, and those who are fortunate enough to have relief after the surgery are usually surprised to see their pain return within 5 years of having the surgery.

Why is this the case? Well, the reason these treatments only provide temporary relief in most cases is because they do not address the true cause of the problem.

What makes a bulging disc so painful is not the disc itself usually – it’s the nerve located directly behind the disc.

When a disc bulges, it will apply pressure on one of the nerves within the spine, and this is what causes so much pain. In fact, this is also the reason that the symptoms don’t stay local to the back.

For example, an individual who has a bulging disc in the lower back will not only have low back pain, they will also develop symptoms like pain radiating down the legs (sciatica), weakness in the legs, problems with the bowel (such as constipation, cramps, or diarrhea), loss of control of the bladder, problems with the sexual organs, etc.

So, the treatments we just mentioned are all designed with one goal in mind – reduce the inflammation around the nerve, thus relieving the pain. And although that sounds good on the surface, the disc has still not healed, and so the pain usually comes back.

Are there any alternatives to these treatments? Absolutely – learn the rest of the story by clicking the following link (treatment options for a bulging disc).