Disc Injury Treatment in Farragut & Loudon, TN

Comprehensive Consultation and Exam

Our consultation and exam are designed to find the root cause of your disc injury and back pain. Recognizing that masking the pain with medication is not a long-term solution, we will learn what really needs to be done to heal the damage. Whether by observing how you get in and out of a chair, how you walk, identifying your dormant muscles and compressed nerves, or assessing the extent of disc degeneration, we will get to the bottom of things.

We will ask you questions to learn about your history and what may have impacted your disc health. Jobs, sports, fitness, accidents, and even nutrition all play a role in the state of your spinal discs and are critical to understanding the scope of your situation.

Next, we’ll complete a series of exams to assess your spinal loading, flexibility, disc degeneration, muscle balance, nerve pressure, and even spinal alignment. No stone will be left unturned. Once this is complete, we will consider the need for any imaging.

Digital X-rays & Motion Analysis

Our office has state-of-the-art digital X-rays on site, allowing us to assess how much damage there might be, how that damage affects things like your discs and nerves, and what options are available to help you contend with the issues. X-rays are often used during follow-up to determine the level of recovery a patient is making. Pain is only one indicator of spinal health, and imaging is an objective way to monitor your progress.

In our office, X-rays are not taken lightly. We take the minimum number of views necessary to do our best work, and digital advancements minimize the patient’s exposure to ionizing radiation.

Finally, our motion analysis shows where the joints’ motion is impaired. Motion is critical to proper fluid exchange, lubrication, and nutrient replenishment in the discs and joints.

Specific Chiropractic Care In Farragut & Loudon, TN

Imagine your jaw wasn’t completely broken or dislocated; however, it was misaligned enough to change the symmetrical way your teeth connect with every bite. A subluxation in your spine is just like that. Spinal subluxations are worse because of their proximity to your nerves, which are essential to your health. Subluxations in your spine can come slowly over time due to a repetitive job or acutely due to an obvious issue like lifting wheel barrels full of dirt. Either way, the subluxation affects the bones, which causes inappropriate loading and burden on the discs. Consequently, the muscles, joints, ligaments, and nerves are all impacted. These all work as a unit; when one is affected, the whole “symphony” is out of tune.

Subluxations often exist below the radar before they “announce themselves publicly with pain.” The issues that can result from subluxations are:

• Severe disc pain
• Limited mobility
• Disc bulges
• Disc herniations
• Sciatica
• Leg pain
• Groin and testicular pain
• Hip pain
• Pain radiating into the arms and shoulders
• Numbness and tingling in your hands and feet
• Difficulty walking
• Foot drop
• Organ dysfunction

Chiropractic is an excellent choice for disc pain, as indicated in several medical studies and published journal articles worldwide. Patient recovery and satisfaction levels with chiropractic are greater than those for massage, PT, exercise, acupuncture, and all pharmaceutical use. Chiropractic’s success is because we address disc pain at the root cause level, while others focus more on masking the pain

Custom Therapeutic Exercise Plan

Your discs, muscles, ligaments, joints, bones, and nerves are all intricately connected, meaning the most successful long-term approaches to disc injuries must involve proper muscle activation. Most people are familiar with the wording ‘core exercise,’ but that is often too vague and not specific enough for a person with damage to their discs. A particular exercise that may help one person may be very detrimental to another.

Our custom approach to exercise prescription will target proper areas and ensure you won’t harm yourself. As much as we are fans of Google and YouTube, they are often too generic and not the right thing for disc injury pain.

Sitting

Too much time spent sitting causes backward pressure on the disc. Your discs were never meant to endure this type of chronic stress. Usually, sitting doesn’t herniate the desk; however, the chronic long-term wear pattern makes the disc vulnerable to injury. As the disc’s outer fibrous rings weaken, its inner pressure can no longer be contained, and the weakened disc wall begins to bulge beyond its normal perimeter.

Tech Neck

Much like chronic sitting, chronic use of screens causes a downward, forward head posture. This repetitive loading causes backward pressure on the disk. The outer fibrous rings of the disc weaken, and the pressure can no longer be contained, predisposing you to bulges and herniations.

Lifting with Your Back

We all have been told at some point to lift with our legs and not our back. When we do not utilize our legs properly, it causes us to round out our lower back, and this leaves us in a position of vulnerability. The exaggerated load from lifting will cause the back wall of the disc to fail, and a resulting herniation or bulge is common.

Properly addressing an injured or damaged disc and fostering recovery always involves dealing with the following:

a) The load on the disc (alignment)
b) The movement of the disc
c) The stability of the ligaments and muscles around the disc.

Looking at the spine comprehensively allows us to get such great results.