The back is a precious part of your body that you should preserve and maintain since it is so integral to the rest of your bodily functions. It’s unfortunate that sometimes whenever you go about your daily life, you could feel sharp, acute pain that could leave you staggered and unprepared. There’s a chance that either through a freak accident, some intense sports, or physical activity, that you might be suffering from a herniated disc. What exactly is a disc in your back? How can it affect you should it be knocked out of alignment? 

Describing A Herniated Disc

Within your back, 24 discs are within specific slots throughout the entirety of your vertebrate. Suppose you want to understand why they’re so crucial to your vertebrate. In that case, it’s because they are composed of a soft padded cushion that helps support said vertebrate with hard impacts or stressful situations that put pressure on your back itself. It might lead you to question what exactly happens when too much pressure is on these padded cushions or if they suffer a massive impact. If this happens, the disc becomes ruptured, and the gel-substance within begins to leak, and thus a herniated disc is unintentionally created. 

Causes

Many different causes can bring about a herniated disc, with some of those mentioned above. Hard impacts can easily cause a herniated disc, which is why they’re so common for people that work within professional wrestling. With their bodies hitting the mat and the floor as often as they do, it’s no wonder that many wrestlers suffer from that injury. Another factor can be age as well as wear and tear. As you get older and your body suffers more damage, your body will not handle sudden actions. Actions like lifting, throwing a baseball, or being overweight enough to put even more pressure on your center of gravity and, in turn, your spine.

Symptoms

One of the first and immediate symptoms that you’re going to feel right off the bat is acute back pain usually caused by nerves being directly affected by the inflicted area. Nerves can be adversely affected by your herniated discs that your limbs could go from feeling numb to you possibly not having much feeling in them due to how pinched they can be in the given situation. Matters could be so bad for you that even everyday actions such as bending over and sneezing could cause you to grimace in pain from the sudden and sharp activity you’ve undertaken.

Treatment

There are usually two ways to deal with herniated discs. The first method is two let the disc heal on its own as it usually can if the damage isn’t too extensive. However, it would be best if you ensure that you don’t further damage the disc. This step means having a step-back from physical activities that could worsen your state. Sometimes going to physical therapy and going to a chiropractor can help expedite the process. Still, if the damage is too extensive, surgery will be necessary to repair the damage. 

Conclusion

There’s no denying that a herniated disc can give you a large amount of grief, even when you least expect it, which can make an athlete or a hard-nosed blue collared worker’s life miserable given they live off of physical activity. Thankfully, dealing with herniated discs is relatively uncomplicated and straightforward, doing the job of correcting the issue effortlessly for you.