The Truth About Herniated Discs

f you have been diagnosed with a herniated disc, does that mean your back is ruined or that you are headed straight for surgery?

In this episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus exposes the truth about spinal discs and explains how conservative care can help you find lasting relief without invasive procedures. As a proud Palmer College of Chiropractic graduate and the team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs, Dr. Hulsebus frequently co-manages complex structural cases alongside local orthopedic specialists.

He breaks down the anatomy of a disc using the clear analogy of a "sunny-side-up egg" to clarify the massive difference between a common bulging disc and a severe herniation. You'll also learn why traditional, lying-down MRIs have major mechanical limitations and how a precise spinal adjustment can help the disc reabsorb naturally by removing structural stress.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why surgery should always be the absolute last resort for a disc issue.
• The "sunny-side-up egg" analogy for understanding disc anatomy.
• Bulging disc vs. herniated disc: The definitive clinical difference.
• Why lying-down MRIs miss how your spine behaves under gravity.
• How spinal decompression therapy works by creating a natural suction force.
• The reality of spinal fusions and the common "above and below" surgical failure cycle.

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👉 New Patients: Ready to get evaluated? Fill out your paperwork online here: https://hulsebuschiropractic.com/patient-intake-form/

📍 Visit Hulsebus Rockford Chiropractic:

• Address: 1877 Daimler Road, Rockford, IL 61112
• Phone: 815-398-3434
• Website: rockforddc.com

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

0:00

Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here, and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask the Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. Hello and welcome to episode two of a 12-episode series. Last week we discussed sciatica. Still probably one of the most common things that people call the chiropractor about But the thing that goes hand in hand with that, or the other reason they call is they tell me they've been diagnosed with a herniated disc. They say, "Oh, my goodness, I have a herniated disc. Does that mean I have to have surgery? Does that mean I'm in trouble? Does that mean it's my back ruined?" And the answer is no, not, not by any means. Surgery is not always the first answer. It's always the last answer when everything else has failed. So let's describe a little bit about a herniated disc and what we do here in Rockford, Illinois, when somebody calls me and says, "Hey, I have a herniated disc. Can the chiropractor help me?" Well, it, it's not always-- the herniated disc is not always the worst diagnosis. I, I always tease when I, when I bend my head to the left like this, off to the right, excuse me, and the left side's now got the concave side, all my discs are bulging that direction. You see, your discs are shock absorbers in between your vertebrae, and they're designed to move and shift around. Th-the problem is when you have a subluxation or a misalignment of your spine, that me moving my neck like this is very temporary. I come back, it goes back to normal. But when you have the misalignment, there is stress or an injury to your spine at some point, and what happened was the vertebrae got locked down in a position by your muscles. The muscles said, "Wait a minute, something's not right here. We're going to lock this down to prevent further injury." Well, over time, that disc takes that absorption more on one side than the other, and it starts to stick out more on the other side as the other side's pinching down. And as it sticks out, there's things there. It's, it's just not dead space. There's nerves there, there's muscles, there's ligaments, other things, and the disc can start rubbing and irritating those things. And so as a chiropractor, we know that if we get rid of the pinching, the disc will go back where it's supposed to be. So if you're thinking about a disc, I want you to look at a disc, and I want you to think about like a-- some people describe it like a donut. I like to describe it like an egg sunny side up. You have the nucleus in the middle, which would be the yolk, and the donut would be the donut hole, and then the donut itself or the white of the egg would, would be th-the round of the nucleus. Now, when the nucleus should herniate, the nucleus should come out, that, that's, that's serious crisis. That's-- there's no… That's run to the emergency room. We have a real problem on our hands. Your back is definitely blown out. It's, it's… You did something horrible. Now, for the most part, people don't come to the chiropractor with this situation because with this situation, you are in a lot of pain. You think you broke something. You think you've injured something. This is take me to the emergency room. So we don't see a lot of these at all in the clinic, but we do see the white of the egg sticking out. We do see that little part of that coming out. That can definitely be an issue. So what do we do as chiropractors? Well, what we do is we, um, we help get rid of that pinching. We help get that back into place. So there's lots of different ways we do it. But let's also talk about like a bulging disc versus a herniated disc, too. There's a little def-definition change there. A bulging disc is very common. Again, that's kind of like when the, when the- That's the, the dough of the donuts or the, uh, the white of the egg. It's just being stretched or being sticking out. The herniated disc is when it actually pops out, leaks, has a problem, and, and, and moves nerves around and stuff like that. So a disc bulge is very common, very, very no big deal, nothing to get excited about, something we see, you know, every day. Almost everybody, if we did an MRI on them, we'd almost would find a disc bulge in almost every single person. Herniated disc, though, now we're talking about getting into spaces that it's not supposed to be. And as chiropractors, we help make those adjustments, and we help try to alleviate some of that. So if you've had an X- extra- and they … A lot of people come in and say, "I had an MRI, I have a herniated disc." Well, your chiropractor probably wants a little, know a little bit more about that herniated disc. Is it herniated back towards the spinal cord? Is it herniated left or right into the hole where the nerve comes out? And if it is, how much of it's herniated? Is it one millimeter or nine millimeters? There's a big difference there, especially when you start asking us the questions about how long it takes to get better. Knowing the size of that herniation would help a lot. So if you've had an MRI prior or X-rays prior, bring those to your chiropractor with you. Bring those reports with you. Let the chiropractor see the X-rays. Let the chiropractor read the MRI reports. It just helps give us a better idea. Now, the only negative I'll say with MRI reports and MRIs is that you're laying down. You know, 20-some years ago, back in the early 2000s when I started practicing, at that time, a lot of medical facilities were still X-raying your spine when you were laying down. Matter of fact, in my town of Rockford, they were opening a new spinal center, and the doctors from there came over to meet me and talk to us. They brought over some cases and wanted to know how we would handle them. Again, they want to know what a chiropractor would do, so they asked a chiropractor. And so we discussed a couple different cases, but we explained to them how we couldn't use their X-rays because the patient was laying down. We took them in the back and showed them how we take X-rays, and when they designed their new center, they started taking X-rays like us because they saw the value of weight-bearing exercises when you, weight-bearing X- X-rays, excuse me, when you go to evaluate a spine or a posture. So MRIs have their limitations, but it's the best we have today. So what, what do you do if you have a disc herniation and you go to a chiropractor? What are some of the things you can see? Well, a lot of times chiropractors will just do adjustments on them, and they'll, they'll recover on their own in time. As we get rid of that pinching, and we open up the joint space and get the bones moving again, the disc can reabsorb itself back in. Some chiropractors will use decompression machines, where they actually take you, and they open you up. The goal of this, if you have two vertebraes that are pinching down, and you open up and separate those vertebraes, there's a suction force that creates, that helps pull that disc back in, and as that disc gets reabsorbed, it starts to learn that's where it's supposed to be, and over time, it'll grow and learn to go back there So can a, can a chiropractor help with herniated disc? We help a lot of people with a lot of herniated discs. Are we 1,000% gonna get them every single time? Again, it depends on the amount of herniation that's going on, your realistic expectations. If the, the, the disc is fully herniated or the nucleus is sticking out, the odds of chiropractic helping a lot are, are slim. It also kind of shows that you waited too long to go to the chiropractor. You waited till it got really, really destroyed or really, really damaged, and in chiropractic we have 33 principles, and one of them is the limitations of matter. So if you've let it get too bad, too advanced, too far, then we're kind of limited on the healing potential because of the permanent damage that's occurred. So if you start to feel this or if you get diagnosed with this early, don't… You might not want to try 12 weeks of physical therapy, two years of cortisone shots, and then go to the chiropractor. You might want to go right to the chiropractor with the results and ask the chiropractor if you should start chiropractic care. By the way, physical therapy and all that other stuff I mentioned, you can do that while you do chiropractic. You don't have to do one than the other. A lot of times the answer they give you is if you do them all together, then we don't know which one's working. My attitude is, who cares which one's working? It's working. So you don't have to wait. Again, don't ask the physical therapist or the doctor giving you the shots whether you should wait to try chiropractic. They're not chiropractors. They don't know the answer to this. So you might want to look for a chiropractor with a decompression machine if you've got a severe disc herniation. That's gonna take the chiropractic adjustments and add a little bit more to it. I would tell you that me personally, I probably use the decompression machine on less than 5% of my patients. 95% of my patients we're just doing chiropractic adjustments and get great results So can a disc heal on its own? A lot of people ask me that. Can a, can a disc just go back on its own? Well, when you get the alignment fixed and everything working better, the answer is yes, the disc will heal on its own, if you, if you want to call that on its own without the chiropractor. But you restore the alignment, you restore the stress that caused the disc to herniate out. Discs are really resilient. They should bounce back and come back. Can a chiropractor pop a disc back in? The answer is no. Chiropractors don't do that. Chiropractors help free the vertebraes up to reduce the subluxation, restore the motion, and help the proper biomechanics return, and in doing so, the joint functions the way it's supposed to better. And then what happens is the disc will naturally work its way back in because the stress that's causing it is gone away. My father used to always carry a balloon, and he would take the balloon, and he'd squeeze it, and he'd ask, "What's the problem here? Is it the balloon herniating or bulging, or is it me squeezing the balloon? Which is really causing the problem? Should we treat the balloon swelling up because I'm squeezing it, or should we take my hand off the balloon?" The hand is the subluxation. The balloon's obviously the disc. You have to remove the hand before the disc can feel better. You have to remove the stress that's causing the herniation if you want the herniation to heal on its own. What do they do medically? Well, from my understanding, I'm not a medical doctor. From my understanding is what I've seen is that they just go in, they shave off that part of the disc, put a little scar ti- then the scar tissue builds up, and it should regenerate itself. Or they'll go in and actually remove the disc and put a spacer in there and put some hardware there to secure the vertebraes so they don't move anymore. Now, what don't I like about the fact they don't move anymore? Well, the spine's a unique, dynamic joint that's designed to move as you move. When you reduce the ability for the spine to move, there's a price to pay for that. A lot of times people report problems above and below after the surgery. It's just something I've seen in practice. Obviously, not everybody has that because not everybody still comes to the chiropractor after surgery. But for those who have the surgery that still come here, that's the most common complaint. The ones above and below are now bothering me. In my clinical experience, I've seen that they've had more surgeries to fix the ones above and below also, and eventually they just run out of vertebraes to screw together. As chiropractors, we try to avoid the whole process. So here, though, in my city of Rockford, Illinois, I take care of the Rockford IceHogs, the hockey team. I know the orthopedic doctors. We cover the IceHog games together. If I thought you needed more help than just a chiropractic adjustment, I have the ability to call them and get you in to see them, and you want to see a chiropractor that's not closed-minded to when medicine has a, has a purpose or a calling, no more than you want to see a medical doctor that says chiropractic has no purpose. All right. Well, I hope I answered your question of today about a herniated disc. If you have any questions or concerns, go ahead and reach out to the office. You can find us on the internet at rockforddc.com, or go ahead and leave a comment wherever you're watching or listening to this, and thank you for tuning in to episode two. Next week we're gonna leave the disc ar- well, we're not gonna really leave the disc area, but we're gonna leave the lower back area and travel up to the neck, and we're gonna talk a little bit about headaches, migraines, tension headaches, and stuff like that. Thanks for tuning in