Low Back Pains

From our radio show

Caller: I have had low back problems for a number of years, and I would say that once or twice a year my back will go out. My back will go out at the strangest times, I could be sitting in a chair and when I get up, it can go out. I am at the end of my wits with this. I have been trying to do everything I can to strengthen it.

Dr. Darrow: Your situation is very common; most of the people who have back pain, and that is about 80% of the population at some point or another who have recurrent back pain like you do, have what we call lax or loose ligaments that connect the pelvis to the vertebrae. (Ligaments attach the bones to the bones).

So what happens is you can get in certain position where you lift something or there is some activity that you do, the ligaments, because they are loose, will allow the bones to move out of position causing inflammation and pain.

You have to strengthen the abdominal muscles. We have at our clinic, a machine that is called MedX which is very specific for getting those muscles right around the vertebrae tightened up and strengthened up and then Prolotherapy is absolutely perfect for that because it grows back these ligaments and when I say grow back I mean it increases the density by about 50% and the tensile strength by 200-400%.
 

NSAIDs

From our radio show

Caller: I suffer from chronic pain from a number of sports injuries, lower back and shoulder, I currently take a number of NSAIDs, I have tried the ones that are suppose to be strong, but maybe they are bad for you heart. Any suggestions for those of us with these ongoing problems?

Dr. Darrow: In my opinion, the best suggestion is to try to get off the NSAIDs, get to the root of the problem and get that fixed. Have you had any surgeries already?

Caller: I have had three lower back surgeries.

Dr. Darrow: We can examine the low back and see if there is something we can do with Prolotherapy. Do you have any pain down your leg?

Caller: Occasionally down the left leg, but the pain is mostly in the back.

Dr. Darrow: Well that is good news because that sounds like it is “mechanical low back pain,” which means that the ligaments are probably just sprained and you can have hope.
 

Radiculopathy

From our radio show

Caller: I have been suffering with lower back pain due to playing football for such a long time. The pain runs from my lower back down into the right side of my leg. Chiropractors worked on me for years but they say that basically there is nothing they can do for me with the discs as compressed as they are. I played in the NFL for 18 months.

Dr. Darrow: There are two things that run through my mind immediately when someone has leg pain, either it is a radiculopathy which means that there is some bone that is overgrown in the vertebrae that closes off the holes where the nerves come out or there is a piece of the disc that cushions the vertebrae that has broken loose or has become a herniated disc. If that is the case, then Prolotherapy sometimes can help because it stabilizes the vertebrae so there is not much shifting of the bones so it is not irritating the nerve.

We are differentiating between a referral pattern from a ligament in the low back or a radiculopathy which is an inflammation or a pinching around the nerve that comes out of the spinal cord that comes out of the vertebrae and goes down the leg. And unless we are able to put our thumbs in your back and check you out, we would not know for sure what is going on but we will be careful NOT to use an MRI to make our diagnosis for us because more than half the people with no back pain at all, if they get put in an MRI machine, half of them would have disc problems ON FILM, but no back pain.

Most of the surgeries that are done, in my opinion, is to cure the MRI than to cure the person. Our clinic is filled with these people who had the surgeries that have failed.

There is hope, even when people do have these flares of leg pain like you do, most of them go away on their own.

Caller: That is exactly right, I have been dealing with this for 20 years. It comes and goes.

Dr. Darrow: Back exercises can be a good idea. MedX is a big frame machine built by Arthur Jones who built Nautalis Equipment. This machine can strengthen up the muscles in the low back, which can be a good idea with someone with this type of problem. There is a lot of hope that you can deal with this without surgery. But if you have progressive neurological deficits like you can't go to the bathroom, you can't lift your leg, your leg is shrinking in size, things like that you need a surgical consult.
 

Radiculopathy

From our radio show

Caller: I was in a car accident, a roll over car accident on the freeway that resulted in Bulging Discs in my spine and a herniated disc in my neck. They cause me a great deal of pain.

Dr. Darrow: Do you have any pain that goes down your arms or legs?

Caller: Down my arms especially on one side, the left side

Dr. Darrow: (If it is a nerve problem) One of the first things I would try (even before Prolotherapy) is spinal decompression therapy. Spinal decompression therapy is like traction except it pulls you in different directions. What it does is pull on the spine and open up the foramen which are the holes in the spinal cord which the nerves pass through that go down the arm and very often with a series of decompressions, you can aleviate the problem by in essence, giving the nerve more room to breath.

The other thing is that there are trigger points often that can cause these radiating pains down the limbs and even though you say you a herniated disc, that doesn't mean that that is causing your pain or the pain radiation, because there are trigger points that can create the referral pain patterns just as well as what we call radiculopathy or pinched nerve, so you need to go to someone who understands these different mechanisms and just doesn't follow the allopathic medical model of "herniated disc - go to surgery."

We find that most of the people that have these problems with radiating pain is that the radiating pain actually goes away by itself, even without doctors over a period of time, now it can be cyclical thing and come back but often times I have had patients who have fought me and gone to surgery and not only winding up with pain in one limb, but pain going down the other limb as well probably because of scar tissue that forms.
 

Herniated Discs - Sciatica

From our radio show

Caller: I am having a lot of problems with my L5 disc. Every now and then and for no reason I get a tremendous pain back there and my back freezes up and I can't do anything or straighten up and I'm bent over in half. This goes on for several days.

I went and had an MRI and the radiologist says that I have a herniated disc. I would like to know about what causes it and what possibly could correct it other than surgery.

Dr. Darrow: Great Question. Do you know more than half the people walking around with "disc problems" don't have any pain. What does that tell you? It tells you that even though you may have a 5 millimeter herniation in your disc, that may not be what is giving you pain.

From the history of what you are telling me that you cannot straighten up, this does not typically sound like a herniated disc problem, it sounds like something we call mechanical back pain. This is where your ligaments maybe stretched out or the covering of the muscle called the fascia which attaches all across your back muscles and attaches to the pelvis maybe stretched out.

Do you have pain running down your legs?

Caller: Yes I do, it runs down the sciatica nerve, it runs down my right leg and that will go on for a day or two days and then fades away.

Dr. Darrow: It is a very good thing that it fades away that maybe because it is not sciatica nerve pain at all but a referral pain from the ligaments in your back.

We strengthen that whole area up we use MedX back exercises to strengthen the muscles around the vertebrae then we use chiropractic adjustments for alignment, then we use Prolotherapy to thicken and strengthen the ligaments.

Just because it looks like sciatica doesn't men it is sciatica. Sciatica means that the sciatic nerve is actually being impinged on and that is rare that that happens.

Herniated Discs

From our radio show

Caller: I have slight herniation between the L3 and L4 vertebrae from playing sports. What is the suggestion for stabilizing the area short of surgery?

Dr. Darrow: What we do is stabilize the vertebrae and the ligaments around them so if there is a herniated disc, it doesn't cause any havoc by rubbing against the nerves that come out the spine and go down the leg.

There are several ways we stabilize the area, one is with MedX back exercise equipment. MedX machines exercise your back by taking your lower body or pelvis out of the picture so when you exercise (which is just a forward extension and a backwards extension), it strengthens the muscle right around the vertebrae, those little paraspinal muscles that are weak in everyone.

The muscles around the L3-L4 area do not have very good strength, with this MedX equipment, we can strengthen up every area of the back. It has a computer hooked up that shows us exactly where your muscles are weak. Another thing we do is use chiropractic for alignment of the back and we use Prolotherapy, which is an injection in the area where the ligaments attach, we actually thicken up those ligaments by 50% and strengthen them by 200-400%.
 

Herniated Discs

From our radio show

CALLER: I have baseball injury and I play golf at least once a week, and once maybe twice a year I will aggravate this old back injury, a bulging disc. Anything that you can recommend?

Dr. Darrow: What happened with the baseball how long ago was that?

CALLER: 8-9 years ago.

Dr. Darrow: And was that the same area of your back that hurt when you play golf?

CALLER: Yes, lower right, same injury

Dr. Darrow: At some point you probably sprained the iliolumbar ligament. I am a little bit guessing here because I can't touch you, but if you are sore, if you can press you thumb right above your pelvis and that is the sore area, that is where the iliolumbar ligament is and that is what attaches the pelvis to the spine and for people, especially golfers where they make a big turn and swinging their club at like 100 miles an hour and then torquing their body's, it stretches their ligaments way out, it is like a rubber band that has been stretched too far and it doesn't come back to its original size until we do Prolotherapy and it brings it back into alignment. DO you have any leg pain with your back pain?

Caller: No

Dr. Darrow: I am pretty sure if that we palpitated the area for you it would be pretty sore and Prolotherapy would help heal that right up.
 

Complicated Disc Problems

From our radio show

CALLER: What you have been discussing really directly effects my life. I am in my 30's, and for at least the last three to 4 years I have had significant back pain and recently it has gotten worse and to make that more complicated recently I have had a couple of car accidents that have inflamed my lower back pain. I have been told that I have a herniation, I guess a bulge in my lower back and my concern is I don't want to have surgery, what I do want to do is have some semblance of a normal life and I love to play golf which is hard to do with lower back pain. When you go and play you wind up with an aching back that practically knocks you off your feet for a couple of days. How can Prolotherapy help? I have not until recently heard of it and I don't want to have the surgery because I am not happy with the results I hear.

Dr. Darrow: Do you have any pain that radiates down your back to your legs?

CALLER: Sometimes I do, at the moment I don't. If I am more active sometimes I get the pain that radiates down like the thigh of one leg.

Dr. Darrow: And is the back pain greater than the leg pain?

CALLER: Yes, it is the main thing.

Dr. Darrow: This is a good indication for us that surgery is not the answer. The only time I think about anyone having back surgery is when there is a progressive neurological deficit. And that means that you can not go to the bathroom, your leg is shrinking, or your leg doesn't move. That is when you have to think about surgery. You are no where near that. My bet is, because of the twisting of the golf, you have loosened up some ligaments in your low back. We need to get them rejuvenated. Studies have shown by biopsy in these areas that after a series of Prolotherapy injections, the ligaments down there get about 50% thicker and 200-400% stronger and I have taken care of hundreds of golfers, who have no more back pain.

The chances are that you have a ligament strain and the chances are that Prolotherapy can knock that out in three to four treatments.

There are times for surgery, when something become un-anatomical like a bone is bent or a big floating body in their knee and their knee locks up and they can't walk, of course, get those things out. It is the elective surgeries I am talking about.
When you give the body a chance to heal itself, it does. The problems with people like the caller is that they don't heal so well because the ligaments do not have a good blood supply so by doing the Prolotherapy we are instilling a new blood supply to the area which brings fibroblasts that are cells that produce collagen and the area is rejuvenated and the pain goes away.

I have had pain go away in one minute and we have had pain go away in a couple of months, it depends on the patient situation. We had one gentlemen come in who had Prolotherapy on his back after 45 years of back pain and he had no more pain. I would say that the average is three or four treatment over a period of months.