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Back pain is a condition that many people have had to deal with at some stage in their lives. There are many different causes of back pain, but a common culprit is a bulging disc. It is one of the most frustrating spine injuries to heal and causes a lot of pain and discomfort. There are things that you can do to ease the pain of your bulging disc, which can help you avoid surgery. A bulging disc in the lumbar region, the lower back is most common, and this is what we will be discussing today.

What Is A Bulging Disc?

In our spine there are a lot of small bones known as vertebrae. Each of these vertebrae is separated by a disc. The discs are extremely important to the function of our back, and provide a lot of support. Each disc has many layers of connective tissue wrapped around its outer layer, called the anulus fibrosus. Inside this connective tissue is a substance that can be likened to jelly, which is actually called the nucleus pulposus. It can change shape and move around. When this soft jelly like substance pushes against the outer layer of connective tissue of the disc, and creates a bulge, this is when a bulging disc occurs. If the bulge pushes through and breaks the outer connective tissue, this is known as a herniated disc. Here is a picture illustrating a bulging disc and a herniated disc.

The pain that you feel from a bulging disc occurs because the disc is pressing on the nerves relating to the spinal cord. In regards to a bulging disc, sometimes you may not have any pain for a long time. If it’s not pressing against the nerve, you aren’t going to feel anything. Here is a better picture to explain what happens when a disc bulge hits the nerve.

Symptoms Of A Bulging Disc

As I mentioned earlier, you can have a disc bulge and for a very long time not even know it. As long as it is not compressing a root nerve, you will exhibit no symptoms. For those with pain, it is common to feel the symptoms in the lower back region. It could be located in the center, or on either sides of the spine. Remember, that a nerve can cause pain to radiate away from the actual damaged area. This is why you might be feeling pain radiating down the leg, the bum, the thighs, lower leg and even the foot. It is common to feel:

• Muscle Spasms
• Pins and needles
• Muscle Weakness

These symptoms and pain are usually worse during movements such as lifting, bending forwards and sitting. The common theme here is that the lower back is in flexion. Remember the pictures above, and you can see that the bulge actually occurs at the back of the spine. This means that when you go into flexion, or you bend forward for any reason, you are putting more pressure onto the back of disc, and consequently pushing the bulge even further out. This is why coughing and sneezing can aggravate the pain, because you automatically go into a mini forced flexion, doing exactly what you don’t need to do.

Bulging Disc Causes
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Now that you have a grasp on the anatomy, and where the actually bulge occurs and what pain you feel, you will better understand what actually causes a disc bulge. There are three things that commonly cause a disc bulge or a disc herniation.

• Bending forward
• Sitting down
• Lifting

If there is enough force, enough repetition, or the movement goes on long enough, then you are at risk. The fact is that the nature of our lives these days mean that we pretty much are in flexion a lot of the time. Add all these things together, one of those three movements plus force, repetition and time, you have a recipe for disaster. You are putting the disc under a lot of pressure, and there just has to be one wrong movement that will cause the injury.