I’ve been dealing with chronic pain from this for about 6 months. An x ray last week confirmed it. Despite seeing a chiropractor, doing stretches everyday, doing careful exercises, it’s not getting better. I’m too young for this crap.
Does anyone else have or had back problems from PFS? How can you fix it?
Start inversion now as a preventative measure from preventing disk and or disk material from hitting the nerve
So disks are bulged and there is nothing you can do about that . All you can do now is damage control
Core strength exercises and inversion table . Best inversion therapy is the kind done at physical therapist office where they strap you down to table and pull your lower waste with the cable holding for X seconds and releasing
If you can keep the bulged parts of your disks off your nerves and if you can prevent the bulged disks from tearing and disk material from coming out of the tear and hitting the nerve you can be pain free pretty much. Your Lower back will always be compromised and not supported properly and you will always have to not lift heavy anymore in the gym. But you can still be pain free if you do the right things. The pulling of the lumbar spine through inversion therapy is key . It opens up the compressed area and allows for the opportunity for the disk material to move off the nerves . Regardless if you have anything on the nerves now or not I still think the inversion is the way to go . Because it opened up the compressed disk that’s sticking out like an overly flattened dime. Spinal decompression is what I’m saying. Inversion table is a type of spinal decompression Therapy. The best type of spinal decompression Therapy is the cable pulling your waste with like 50 pounds of pull and holding and then releasing over and over again
As much as this sucks if you don’t have the nerve pain Going down your hip and legs consider your self lucky. It’s crippling. Unless it’s mild You will literally feel a crushing sensation in your legs or leg. Like the leg is broke. You will be walking with a limp or not walking at all due to the pain
Stop lifting at gym with the exception of cables and body weight exercises. Do planks every day . Stretch. and get an inversion table. Believe me it can get so much worse if you don’t do all of these things now. Biggest thing regardless of what anyone tells you your lifting heavy at the gym days are over. Don’t listen to any personal trainer or gym buddy on this . I have been living with it since 30 and I’m 37. I have been pain free for about a year . Age 33-35 was the worst because I was not accepting the situation and kept lifting heavy at the gym listening to know it all gym rats and trainers. Age 35 was when I stopped lifting heavy and started the decompression therapy and got so much better. If I had someone giving me this advice at 30 right after that MRI/diagnoses it would have saved me lots of suffering
Ok but how do you fix it permanently? Because I cannot live with this pain the rest of my life as I’m only my late twenties.
I will tell my Chiro about the inversion therapy. Thanks for that.
I do a plank routine twice a week. I have not lifted heavy in a gym for 2.5 years. I do have radiating low back pain, but it’s an aching pain, not a crushing one. No Numbness or tingling.
But if you’re telling me this is permanent then I’m out. I don’t have enough energy to deal with a permanent problem like this on top of all the other problems I have.
Thank you very much for your detailed reply. I was not expecting so much.
Ok so your already not lifting heavy, stretching and planking. All you can do as far as daily maintenance is add some new lower back and core exercises that your not already doing and the spinal decompression. It’s good that it’s not crushing . If you have radiating pain going into the legs it has to be because the soreness of the budged disk is tightening the muscles (muscle spasms) and the muscles tightening are compression the nerve . Or actual part of the disk that’s sticking out is hitting the nerve . If you stretch or take muscle relaxers and the radiating pain goes away even temporarily it prob means the muscles tightening is causing the radiating the pain . Make that spinal decompression a part of the routine. If that does not work over extended period of time you would need to consider surgery.
Once a disk gets damaged (bulged) it’s permanent. The body can’t heal the disk. No medicine, injection or surgical procedure can “cure” the disk. A disk is like bodies natural shock absorber . Once it goes bad it does not heal . There are incidents of before and after MRI’s of bulged disks looking better like the doc will say “the bulged is no longer viewable on MRI”. But the disk is still not healthy. A spinal fusion is when they take the disk out and put bone where the disk was and screw and bracket the bone in place . Once the bone heals into the vertebrae that section of the back “is all one piece” and can no longer move independently . Technology with artificial disks that get installed in place of bad disk is getting better but not their yet for universal use .
If the disks r not torn yet with disk material Coming out this is a good sign …
Then there is spinal stenosis which is narrowing of the spinal canal caused by the disk compression which is a different but similar beast . It can cause radiating pain . I also have moderate spinal stenosis seen on MRI but latest MRI shows no more nerve impingement
My symptoms are currently minor in spite of this being permanent is my main point. If you can get symptom free your biggest issue will be worrying about doing something that moves the disk back into the nerve and being screwed again
dude you can fix disc pain whether they are in fact back to their original form or not is moot point
just do mcgill big 3 and inversion
avoid squat deadlifts leg press and you will be good
Not moot .
Me herniated disk with tear with no pain one wrong move more disk material comes out that tear into nerve and back to hell I Am. Same with this guy with bulged disk. Also because my l4/l5 is crushed my back is no longer completely straight or stable
@ wings This is why you don’t listen to gym rats and know it all’s . Follow my advice . Don’t listen to this guy . You are doing the right thing by not going back to regular routine once you get pain free. Going back and force from my regular routine prolonged my suffering . Just accept that your back is compromised and continue to do what your doing and do that spinal decompression
a lot of people have bulging discs on mri with no pain
as long as your pain is fixed then you are good
and many go back to heavy lifting even after disc bulge
so yes go based on symptoms but it does take a long time and strict routine
Bulging discs are a consequence of low T / post finasteride syndrome. That’s why they’re so common nowadays in even young people.
I say this because properly functioning testosterone will produce collagen and cartilage which will strengthen the discs. Without the testosterone the discs will be more prone to injury or just start bulging for no reason.
Hey thanks again for the detailed response. I will post more later but for now a quick question. Do you think if I could raise my testosterone level (which I suspect is low) it would fix the bulging discs? Sorry if it’s a stupid question but when you say that surgery may be my only option, it depresses me greatly.
I’d say prolonged sitting and low muscle tone are worse offenders. But of course can be a consequence of PFS or low T.
It’s possible to become pain free, but if the disc is damaged I don’t think it’s possible with today’s knowledge to fix it.
Avoid sitting and rotation of the spine. Then do 5-15 min of specific exercise each day for months. I’d say you’ll have more luck with a physiotherapist than a chiropractor, at least in the long run.
Yeah sitting too long brings the most pain.
I think I’ll try hanging every other day to try to decompress my spine. And maybe I will see my doctor and try to get an mri (and also get my damn testosterone levels checked for once!)
Yeah this is awful, I don’t want to have chronic pain. But between what I’ve read here and watched/read elsewhere, you can cure the pain even if you still have a bulging disc. So that’s definitely hopeful. I don’t technically have to cure the bulge, just the pain. But I had a suspicion last year that I would always have to be careful with my back from then on out. I never intended not intend currently to ever lift heavy in a gym, although I do understand the critical importance of maintaining muscle mass.
I just really hope I (and anyone else here suffering from this) can get to a pain free point. And maybe even a miracle could occur? I have read studies where subsequent mri imaging showed the disc bulge had reabsorbed. Hopefully that will happen for us with proper care.
Thank you for the helpful replies.
Yeah this usually happens, but the body can’t “refill” the disc.
You want to move around as much as possible, because the disc’s don’t have any blood supply. They need movement to be able to move fluid around. But it’s important the movement isn’t painful.
Btw I also had issues with sitting for extended periods of time because of the pain in my back and one leg.
Sleeping on my stomach also helps, as opposed to on my back. Basically sleeping in the position of the McKenzie Method.
TL;DR McKenzie Method
I injured a disc a year ago (from sheer stupidity, not FPS). I’m trying to get back to lifting the same weight as I did before, and I’m halfway there, although I keep reinjuring it a tiny bit and having to back off whenever I increase the weight.
I experienced no improvement for the first few weeks until someone told me about the McKenzie Method. Basically, just lie flat for 1 minute, on your forearms for 1 minute, then your palms (cobra position) for 1 minute. I do it a couple times a day and you’ll know if it works because you should be in much less pain immediately afterwards.
This is what annoys me. Why can’t the body just generate new disc material? Even if it takes a year, I feel like the body is smart and capable enough that it should be able to do it. Back injuries are (and were in the past) probably one of the most common injuries to humans. Wouldn’t the body have developed an ability to fully heal from these injuries? Living with chronic pain, especially starting at a young age, doesn’t seem to confer an evolutionary advantage.
Very good question. The basic answer is that there are no blood flow to the area. The discs are not alone in this regard, as other cartilage have the same problem.
Another good question is why a new hand doesn’t appear if we cut our current off. Some animals are indeed able to do this (and the “hand” is still in our genetic code).
I can’t answer why, but if we look back in history not many humans had back injuries before we became farmers. Hell there wasn’t much wear and tear damage when we were hunter gatherers, and they only worked a couple of hours per day to support themself.
So maybe there was no genetic selection for internal tissue repair, and other genes were more favorable.
I have PFS… after taking it every day for 20 years
I also had 2 bulging discs in my back with horrible sciatica
I had to have surgery.
The truth is I never thought it had anything to do with finasteride.