Disc herniations in the neck can be very painful, but they can also be relieved completely naturally
without surgery nearly all the time.
There's so many treatment options out there that are non surgical to help disc herniations
in the neck.
But some can actually make the neck pain worse and even worse than the disc herniation which
might lead to more invasive procedures surgical procedures done unnecessarily.
In this video, I'm going to share with you 11 Worst treatments that you can do to get
neck pain relief for your neck herniated disc, the first one is twisting all the way this
is often an exercise are a stretch recommended by healthcare professionals.
And they'll tell you this to twist or turn your neck all the way as far as you can, and
then go the other way.
And the reason why this is bad is because the way the discs are designed in the bones
of the neck, whenever you have a herniated disc, that's a sign that disk is no longer
as strong as it's supposed to be it's injured the herniation that that means that part of
the disk has bolted outwards, and it's no longer connecting the two bones properly.
So if you force twisting all the way, then that causes your neck to overstretch and it
can potentially worsen the disc herniation.
The next one is forced chin retractions.
Now this is an exercise I commonly see physical therapists and chiropractors and other healthcare
professionals recommend to their patients.
And this is where you attend retraction motion is just where you shove your chin back, you
move it back or retract it.
It's like making a double chin.
Now the problem it's a good exercise, it's a good concept.
But forcing the motion healthcare professionals will say make your hand like this and put
your fingers on your chin and push it back forcefully to get the bones and everything
to move backwards.
And the intent here is to create better posture in the neck bones to to align everything better.
The problem is if you have that injured disc, it's going to potentially shear the bones
on each other, which is going to make the disc worse as well.
I've seen many patients over the years that really do a lot of this exercise end up making
their neck pain worse.
And it's so confusing because there's research behind this motion.
But the way that it's done is what the problem is.
Number three is related to this one.
It's repeated chin retractions.
So when you do repetitions when you're doing this over and over and over again, I always
think that people look like birds walking whenever they do this because birds move their
head forward and back like that.
But I've seen patients come in for neck problems like this herniations.
And they'll say yeah, I went to this place, they told me to do this repeatedly.
And so I've just been doing this every you know how many times a day I'll do dozens of
reps, hundreds of reps, but my neck keeps getting worse for some reason it doesn't seem
to be working.
And the reason is because of that shear force as well.
So you don't want to force it and you don't want to repetitively stress it because that
injures the disc in your neck even more.
Number four is stretching neck muscles, the most common stretch that I see people do is
they'll pull their head over and make it go as far as possible, they might turn their
head and pull it this way.
And the intent is to stretch the muscles in this area of the neck.
And the problem with that is that those muscles tend to be overstretched already.
And this isn't something that's commonly talked about or even identified by healthcare professionals.
But in people that have disc herniations in their neck, usually their upper trap muscles
or their neck muscles are being elongated and overstretch because their shoulder muscles
aren't very strong, so everything syncs down.
And it feels tight as a result of that.
So stretching it kind of makes sense at if you just look at it superficially.
But when you look at it more deeply, if you understand how everything works, strengthening
those overstretched muscles actually fixes the problem.
This is how we fix the root problem of disc herniations in the neck.
So stretching actually makes the muscles even weaker and feeds into the muscle imbalance.
So you don't want to be over stretching.
I tell people if you absolutely need to stretch, do it for just a tiny bit of time and don't
get very intense at all.
But if you hang out there and aggressively stretch your neck muscles, you're actually
going to make the problem worse.
Number five is weighted neck and head exercises.
I have seen I haven't seen this in a while but I have seen clinics out there that will
put straps on people's heads and dangle weights from them.
Or there's big machines big contraptions where there's a head piece like a crown that you
slide your head into, and then you hold on with your arms and you're moving your head
against resistance forward and back and sideways and you turn and you strengthen your neck
muscles this way, but this is flawed because the muscles that turn and control the neck
are not usually the problem.
It's usually the shoulder muscles that the ones that make the shrug that are the weakest
muscles and causing those neck muscles that turn in control your neck to actually become
over dominant.
So if you're strengthening the neck muscles that that turn you move you around.
By hanging these weights on your head and moving against resistance, you're actually
making the muscles that are too strong, even stronger, which adds more compression to the
discs in your neck, we actually have to look at other muscles around those, usually the
shrugging muscles in order to offload those neck muscles and take pressure off the discs
to allow it to heal for the long term naturally without surgery.
Number six is shoulder retractions, this is a super common exercise done in clinics.
And it's where they tell people to do this pinch your shoulder blades back repeatedly.
The problem with this is that when you pinch your shoulder blades back like that you work
out certain muscles that are between your shoulder blades, called the rhomboids.
These rhomboid muscles actually cause the shoulders to downward rotate more, they cause
your shoulders to kind of sink down a bit more, which elongated these muscles up here
and actually adds more compression to the neck bones and discs.
And to make matters even worse, I often hear healthcare professionals tell their patients
don't only shrug backwards, but keep your shoulders low, they'll tell them to sink their
shoulders down and then pinch backwards, which just adds to that elongation that overstretching
of the muscles in this area of the neck.
The next one is aggressive traction.
Now traction is a good thing.
This is where you might get put in a device that holds on to your head and pulls your
head this way away from your body.
Sometimes you're upright.
And they'll have a contraption, a pulley system that they hang weights on.
And that adds a little bit of force a little bit of lift on your head.
There's other devices to where you lie down.
And sometimes it's with a pump with a hand or it's a big machine that an operator somebody
in the clinic has to turn on and work and adjust, it starts to pull your head away from
your shoulders, and the theory is good and that it's taking pressure off the discs in
your neck.
The problem is if it's aggressive, there's something called the stretch reflex in your
muscles, when your muscles start to get stretched, because the traction is so aggressive, then
your muscles respond without your control by trying to tighten up to resist the traction
that the distraction because it's dangerous for your muscles, it's too much your body
protects itself by trying to contract by trying to use the muscles to hold everything together,
which makes the muscles stronger when you use muscles, they get stronger.
And this ends up adding strength to the wrong neck muscles, which adds compression over
time.
So this might feel good in the moment, you might feel like you got stretched out.
But if your muscles were working against it the whole time.
And usually it's a grimacing face that you'll make.
It's like Oh, it's too much traction, but I'll take it, people will say that I can take
it because they want to make sure they don't have surgery.
So they're doing this traction.
And they're suffering through it in order to avoid surgery.
But in reality, they're making their muscles stronger, because they're setting off that
stretch reflex.
That's not a good thing you want to avoid aggressive traction now light traction, I
do that I recommend that to patients.
And if we're talking about pounds of force, you're talking about five to 10 pounds, the
head on average weighs 1314 pounds, depending on your size, you don't want to take off more
force than the full weight of the head.
So going more than 1314 pounds tends to be too aggressive and your muscles will feel
it by trying to contract.
Next we have aggressive adjustments, and I'm talking about what chiropractors do where
they pop next, and they turn you but there's also physical therapists that do this, I myself
do this.
But there's different ways to do adjustments.
I call them manipulations where you're moving the neck and you suddenly move it kind of
quickly.
In an effort to free up a joint sometimes it creates a pop sometimes not.
In somebody who's got a herniated disc in their neck, it's important to not fully twist
the neck because that disc between the bones is injured and it doesn't have full connection.
And if you over twist the neck, it can overstretch the disc and aggravate the disc and hurt it
more over time, especially if these adjustments or manipulations are being done on a repeated
basis, like multiple times a week for several weeks or several months.
I've seen so many patients come into my office that have been receiving care like this for
months, even years, and their neck pain has gotten worse.
They usually tell me you know it got better at the beginning because there was joints
that were stuck that needed to be unstuck.
But as they kept going through it, they got these treatments for too long, then their
neck started to get looser and they started to feel worse afterwards.
And if exercise is not paid attention to if that root problem isn't addressed, while everything's
getting looser in the neck, that's a serious problem that could be avoided if the treatment
happens correctly.
Next up we have a reliance on medication some people they take your over the counter pain
medications or maybe they even go to the doctor and get prescription strength pain medications.
They're taken on a consistent basis, in order to get relief from the neck pain that comes
on from having a herniated disc in your neck, this neck pain can be so serious, it doesn't
let people sleep at night, it ruins your concentration, it makes them want to just go lie down or
get comfortable, because they don't want to tolerate the rest of the day because the pain
is so intense.
And if you're in that situation, and you're starting to take pain medications on a consistent
basis, you might find that you feel better takes the edge off, maybe doesn't, it doesn't
go away completely, maybe it does.
But either way it helps, that's a good sign.
That means that your neck pain has a chance to improve if the pain medication is helping
it out.
The problem is if you're not actively doing something to address the root muscle imbalance
that's causing the disc herniation.
And you're only relying on the pain medications, then that problem that root problem is going
to fester, it's going to get worse and worse as time goes on.
Because you might be thinking, Well, I feel fine and not do anything about the imbalance
of muscles in your neck.
And if a month goes by months go by, then the problem gets worse, the stronger muscles
get stronger, that adds more compression to the discs in your neck, the weaker muscles
get weaker.
And you're gonna have to dig yourself out of a deeper hole if you start to address the
root problem later on.
Plus, not to mention all the side effects of medications Of course, you know, internal
organ damage your liver, your kidneys, your brain can be affected by this stuff to addiction
problems, if it's the prescription strength stuff.
There's other issues that you don't want to face.
If you're taking either over the counter pain medications, or prescription strength pain
medications, they're not bad all together, you might use them in a pinch to get through
a short period of time, you just don't want to rely on them for weeks or months on it.
Next up is relying on injections.
Just like with pain medications injections are pain medication that's injected into a
disc or into a joint or into an area that's painful.
They'll do this in a doctor's office very often a pain management doctor will do this
for you, even your general doctor will do this.
And it could bring some longer relief than just taking pain medications by mouth.
But the relief is still short term, you're not going to get long term cure of the problem
or improvement decompression of the disc that lasts for a long time.
It's just masking the pain that you're feeling.
And it's not a good thing to be relying on.
The reason why I say relying is because some people will get into the habit where they
go back to the doctor as soon as the relief wears off.
And they'll go back every few months that your doctor will limit you to just three per
year they should be doing that because they know that the most common injected pain medication
is cortisone.
And there's other ones similar to other steroid, anti inflammatory pain relief medications
that they'll inject in.
But we know in research, it's pretty clear that this medication breaks down connective
tissue, which is what discs are made of ligaments, cartilage and other tissues in your neck.
And so if you get too much of this medication injected into your neck, it actually breaks
things down and can make the situation worse in the long run.
So you're limited on how often you can use this.
Now I tell some patients who have never had an injection before and they're coming in
to my office.
And if we can't make much progress on on other fronts that we're looking at to work out and
fix.
I'll tell them, You know what, go ahead and go to the doctor asked for a prescription
you talk to them and see what they recommend.
First off, they may give you a pain medication prescription, or they may recommend an injection.
Whenever you're open to doing you discuss with the doctor and see what works best for
you.
But don't rely on it, you need to make sure that you're working on some exercise plan
to fix the root problem while you're under the pain relief of the medication.
Because it may be that you can't exercise comfortably because of the pain.
But if you get an injection, where you're taking some pain medication, then you'll feel
more comfortable and better able to tolerate doing the exercises to get you that long term
relief.
And so you're just taking the medications or doing the injection for a relatively short
time and you won't need it later on because you fix the root problem.
Now the last one here is surgery for a herniated disc in the neck.
There's three surgeries commonly done we have a fusion, which is where they put plates and
screws in your neck and they connect the two bones.
Then we have a microdiscectomy where they trim off the edge of the disc that's pinching
the nerve.
And then we also have a disc replacement where they cut off the ends of the bones of the
of the vertebrae in your neck and they replace it with a disc they usually do one on the
front for that.
Now this is extreme and it's also permanent.
It may be what you need.
There's there's some people out there that I definitely believe are good candidates for
surgery.
But I also believe that surgery tends to be overdone for discriminations in the neck because
the root problem hasn't been addressed.
And I also want to caution you if you decide to go get surgery.
If you've already had a neck surgery, you still need to fix the root problem because
if you haven't fixed the underlying root muscle them Balance, where certain muscles are too
strong and others are too weak, and you're getting excessive compression through your
neck through your spine, then even with a fusion or the disc replacement of the diskectomy,
the surgery that you had, you're still going to aggravate the tissues in there, and you
might cause the surgery to fail.
Or what happens more commonly is the levels above and below the disks that are above and
below where you had the operation at.
Those become affected after some time.
It's just a matter of time before you're talking to a doctor, and they're telling you Well,
maybe you need the next level fused above, or maybe you need another disk replaced below.
And they're happy to do that, especially if it did buy you some relief.
But if you've got another disc herniation in your neck, that's a strong sign that you've
got an imbalance there that needs to be addressed.
And that takes me to my last point here, this isn't a treatment that's worse.
This is what this is how you fix it, you've got to get stronger muscles and it's usually
the shrugging muscles, the muscles that help you shrug up your shoulders, and you've got
to learn how to use them while holding your neck in the proper posture, the proper alignment
to use the deep neck flexors that are behind your throat right here.
So you can't be struggling to let your head get out like that.
You've got to shrug and maintain your head position.
And I've got other videos where I talk about this and you can learn more about all our
information for neck disc herniations in the playlist we have linked in the description
below here go check that out.
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Thank you so much.
I'll see you in the next video.
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