Your questions involve:





1. Is the suggested discectomy going to fix the back pain problem?





Most experts agree that pinpointing the exact cause of back pain is extremely difficult, if not impossible to do. Success lies in correctly identifying the structures that may be involved in the pain, by way of visual diagnostics such as an MRI, X-ray, etc, along with lining up all the information with your symptoms. If your symptoms match very close to what your MRIs show, the odds are pretty good that you will improve with your doctor's recommendations.





2. Are there other options that I should know about?





There are always going to be options for non-surgical back pain relief, however, the challenge seems to lie in finding the right practitioner to help you with your case, along with the amount of time that a particular diagnosis may take to correct. For example, disc herniations may be treated 100% non-surgically, but it takes anywhere from 12-18 months to rebuild a disc. That entire time needs to be "incident-free". You may wish to research alternative forms of manual therapy with research showing success with your type of condition.





3. What exercises should I be doing prior to the surgery to reduce recovery time?





There is much debate on this topic, as to whether conditioning the spinal stabilizers while you are in pain can be effective or not. It does make sense, however, that reducing pain can significantly improve muscle function. It depends on how much pain you are in, and what kind of exercises you are referring to. The best information to date on spinal rehabilitation exercises comes from a book, "Therapeutic Exercise For Spinal Segmental Stabilization In Low Back Pain". This is a clinician's book, but is very valuable for learning how to activate the small muscles that stabilize your spine, which will undoubtedly be dysfunctional.





4. What is the recovery time?





Recovery from surgery is based on a number of things, from how stressful the surgery is, to how fast you rebuild the stabilizer muscles in your spine afterward, to even how good your nutrition is. You can significantly improve healing in your body by addressing these areas.





Sam Visnic NMT


www.Endyourbackpainnow.com/blog