16 Years of Disc Pain to Enjoying Life Again | Ricky Hall

Hey, I know you or someone you know may have suffered from back pain (disc prolapse). You’ll enjoy this story

It has been an absolute pleasure in helping Ricky to recover from his back pain (L3-5 disc prolapse). For 16 years he had fluctuating difficulty with even light tasks like hoovering and putting on his socks. Now however, he’s golfing, gymming, starting yoga and running his successful construction company pain free.

Now, believe it or not when you’re suffering from 16 years of back pain, it isn’t the spinal damage that is the hardest barrier to get around. In fact, at least 20% of individuals under the age of 60 have a disc prolapse (Ricky had been scanned and the results showed a disc prolapse at L3-5). The hardest barrier to get around is pain itself. We can have a pain free disc prolapse therefore the debilitating problem is pain itself, not the damage per se but that’s for another post.

When back pain is chronic (lasts longer than 3 months) it effects three key areas

Frontal Cortex (the Big Brain)

This presents itself in the form of negative belief systems i.e. “My back will never get better… I just know it will go again… I have the back of a 50 year old”

We need to go from this to “I am confident I can do this… My back can handle this”

The Amygdala (the Lizard Brain)

This is where fear resides. We need to reduce anxiety levels and reduce fear of relapse otherwise pain is more likely to occur. This is why it is important to empower our patients over their pain with self massage and pain relieving exercises

The Spinal Cord

The spinal cord will make pain a lot easier to occur if the patient isn’t taught how mimic painful movements pain free. For example, by practicing a pain free press up, you can get a pain free bench press. By practicing pain free movement whilst laying, you can reduce painful movement whilst standing

Now Ricky’s path to recovery wasn’t without obstacles. But every couple of weeks we were making significant improvements. Manipulating his upper and lower back eased his pain as well as deep tissue massage. But the most important factor was that every week to two weeks, I was providing Ricky with exercises with goal based outcomes that got him closer to his goal which was to play golf pain free.

I have attached his rehab plan below and if you want the basics of the spinal rehabilitation guide that I write for our patients, just go to www.revitalizeclinic.co.uk/resources

Revitalize Pain Clinic – Lumbar Spine and Sciatica

Patient Goal (e.g. marathon, play with kids again):
pain free, play golf
engage core muscles
Phase One
Pain Relief (desensitisation, pain education, home tools/ management)
5 x 60 seconds
1. novel movements back
2. thread the needle
3. nerve flossing
Phase two
Rehabilitation (Education on process; Backwards engineer end goal; Strategise graded improvements to function)
5 x 60 seconds
1. half lower crunch
2. glute bridge
1. lower crunch
2. glute bridge march
3. SLR crunch
1. DL, wall squat
2. single leg glute bridge
3. swiss ball crunch, knee flexion
Phase Three
State to discharge (i.e. pain 1/10; Can squat with 20kg load; Can sit for longer than 60mins pain free)
1. goblet squats, SLSLDL
2. core activation routine
You may resonate with this post. If so, you know what to do. Enter your information in the comment box below / message us directly and we’ll be happy to offer you a free consultation. Take control of your pain
#osteopathy #chiropractor #kent #physio #physiotherapy #gravsend #osteo #chiro #pain #nhs #healthcare #health #fitness #manipulation #sport #gym #active #fitfam
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