Small Daily Habits That Help a Disc Herniation Recover

You're listening to the Restoring Human Movement podcast, where movement experts discuss the latest evidence-based practices to help you and your clients move with mastery. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Restoring Human Movement podcast. This is your co-host, Dawne Costantino. And in today's episode, we are going to be discussing low back pain, specific to disc irritation, like disc herniations, bulges, things of that sort. And I'm going to really focus in on tiny little habits and lifestyle changes that you can consider to help aid in the healing process of things like this. Quick little update on me. I went to a wedding this weekend.

My very dear breast friend got married in Joshua Tree, and it was probably one of the coolest weddings that I have been to. And I wanted to bring that up because I want to share with all of you my love for national parks that are in the desert. I don't think a lot of us prioritize going and seeing some of these national parks that are very deserty, because most of the time it's, what am I going to see there? It's hot. It's dry. Sandy. Lizards. You know, who wants to go see stuff like that? But every time that I have been in the desert or been in some of these national parks, like Death Valley, Joshua Tree, it's pretty incredible the beauty that you can find when you're there.

So, if you haven't been, I highly encourage you. Just prove me wrong. I know Dr. Sebastian doesn't like the desert very much, so, you know, he disagrees with me on that one. But if you've considered it, but have put it at the end of the list because of what I just said, I highly, highly recommend you guys get out there. Go see what the desert has to offer. Go in the springtime. Even in the winter, it's pretty damn cool. So, yeah, that's that. Let's hop into what we're going to be discussing today. So, like I said, we're going to be talking about low back pain. I think we've done tons and tons of episodes on low back pain.

If this is your first time listening, welcome. And go back into what we have recorded already and listen to all the stuff that we've talked about separate from low back or more on low back. We have tons of stuff on YouTube as well. So, yeah, but really what I wanted to dive into is talking more about things that we can do on a day-to-day basis separate from our rehab and our strength and our stretches and all of that stuff that you, you know, are constantly searching for on the Internet or are asking for help from from a health care professional. So let me just share a specific case because this case is the one that actually really made me want to record this.

This is a young male dealing with low back discomfort, has had multiple episodes of low back pain in his life, probably a couple a year, if not more. And this one specifically is disc irritation. So we know that this person has irritated his disc herniation so much so that he's walking in super crooked. I feel like he's going to fall to one side because that's the body's way of trying to get away from the irritation. Sometimes, just depending on where the disc herniation is located, your body will move towards it or away from it to try to get away from pain. So we call that antalgia. So this guy walks in with crazy antalgia.

Nothing specific that brought it on. There was no hint of it happening. This is somebody who is working more than 40 hours a week, near 60 to 80 hours, is, I believe, sleeping on a couch currently. Just the situation of where to sleep right now due to stress has changed. This is somebody also who is on their feet often. So very stressful life that they live. Look at my notes. So multiple episodes in the past. It is worse with sitting too long. Worse with driving. Worse with reaching for the gas pedal when driving. So this specific pain was on the right side of his back. And so reaching with his right foot does seem to make it worse.

And then worse when waking up first thing in the morning. And that is actually when he first started to notice this newest episode is just woke up in the morning and there it was. So nothing specific that he can recall that brought it on. He has noticed a pattern of as he goes on about his day, it does get better. This person is on their feet more hours than not. But sometimes when he has to do admin work for his job, sitting down, or even driving and commuting, all of that seems to irritate it. So I really, really just wanted to dive into, again, I'll share the stretches and exercises that are currently helping this person.

But I really wanted to talk more about the little changes throughout the day. So let's dive into that instead. One of the first things that we can be mindful of is what we do when we wake up in the morning. So, again, this isn't going to coincide with everybody's low back pain and not everybody's disc herniation either. But these are, like, common patterns that I see. Is what you do first thing in the morning can be really, really helpful to kind of hurry up that, like, feeling better moment of the day. Usually that first moment you wake up and you try to get out of bed is when it's going to feel its worst.

So taking a couple minutes while you're still in bed to do things like rolling over onto your stomach, breathing into the bed, even being on your stomach at first, it might hurt a little bit. You're probably going to feel some increase in pain. But you know it's right for you if within a minute or two it actually starts to diminish away a bit. So laying on your stomach and breathing into your belly, like, truly thinking about pushing your belly button through the mattress when you're breathing that way. One to two minutes of that is usually what I recommend for somebody who's dealing with this.

Getting out of bed is really important, too. We don't just want to do, like, a crunch, a sit-up to get up. It's usually a roll to your side, stiffen your belly a little bit, use your hands to push you up to a seated position, and then slowly go ahead and get out of bed. So I'm not one to usually promote avoiding movements too often, but sometimes in these acute stages of a disc flare-up, too much excessive bending, twisting can irritate it. So we want to minimize that just within maybe the first few days to a week, really just depends on your symptoms. So some belly breathing, laying on your stomach, feel free to do it on your back with a pillow under your knees and your head flat, just a nice neutral spine, and belly breathing.

The belly breathing will start to wake things up. It'll get blood flow going. It'll start even just these small little micro movements in your spine. So once we're up and moving, going and just chugging as much water as you possibly can, because I really tell people, however much water you're drinking, drink more, because usually most of us are not drinking enough. As we all know, it's probably the math equation is take your amount of pounds that you weigh, cut it in half, and turn it into ounces, and that's what you should be drinking on a day-to-day basis, minimally. So I want you to nicely, slowly go walk over to your kitchen and chug as much water as you possibly can to just start yourself off with getting that water intake in for the day.

And then if you have the time, or if you can set aside some time, go outside in the morning sunlight. Obviously, weather permitting, wherever you are, we're lucky here in California, we can get outside first thing in the morning, and it's pretty damn nice. But if you can, get outside, get some of that morning sunlight, and 10, 20 minutes of walking. Walk in circles if you want to. Go for a walk through the neighborhood. Take your dog for a walk. I don't expect all of this to be completely pain-free. What we're looking for is whatever discomfort you are feeling at the time, it slowly starts to diminish away.

I'm not looking for perfect. I'm looking for it's getting better. Even if it stays the same. If it's not getting worse, you know, like say you're at a 4 out of 10 pain, and you can go walk for 20 minutes, and it doesn't get any worse on you, then friggin' do it. As a green light, your body's telling you it's okay and safe to do this stuff, so go get some movement in as much as we can. Digressing a bit, I think one of the big reasons, too, that I wanted to go over this is because this idea of rest, I'm starting to hate the word a little bit, because when people are recommended rest during injuries, I always have to ask people to define what is rest to you.

Is that bed rest? Is that sit down more often than not? Is that I need to back off of how much weight I'm picking up on a barbell? Define rest for me. So, resting can sound exactly like what I've already described so far. It's going for walks. It's doing things to tolerance. It's not provoking and scraping the scab, but doing things that can really help aid in this healing process. So keep in mind, the body is an impeccable thing. It knows what it's doing. And really, you just need to be doing the stuff to help with the healing process and just educating you on ways to, again, stop scraping the scab is going to go a really, really long way.

Let me look at my list here. So we talked about laying on your stomach and belly breathing. Another thing, too, is we start to move a little weird when we're in pain. Pretty stiff. We don't get our joints through a lot of ranges of motion because we're afraid to make things worse. And so if you can, stretching out the hips in ways that don't provoke your back, I'm going to recommend. Usually because we walk weird when we have back pain and our hips aren't having to go through a whole lot of range of motion. So little hip flexor stretches, little pigeon poses or figure fours, pulling your knees to your chest.

Anything that doesn't increase pain in your back keeps it under a three out of 10. You feel a nice, easy stretch in the hips. I'm going to highly recommend you do that as long as it feels okay and safe for you. And the stretches I just recommended there, you can easily find that on YouTube if you wanted to just type those words in. Cat-cow is the next one. That's the way we're going to start to get our spine moving a little bit more too. Common trend, again, I never want to put everybody into the same category, but most disc flare-ups don't like a lot of flexion surrounding your back. Typically, it's okay and safe to do it in a very passive way, like a child's pose position or bringing your knees to your chest when you're laying down, something where you don't have a lot of gravity taking a load on your spine.

So cat-cow, going through the ranges that feel okay for you in a cat-cow. Don't force the extreme flexion. Don't force the extreme extension. Just getting some nice, easy, like wave-like flowy motions through the spine after you've maybe gone for a walk and gotten the juices flowing. I'm going to highly recommend you build that into your morning routine. So far, it already sounds like our morning's been three hours long, but really, if you take out the walk, this should only take about five minutes of your time to chug some water, breathe for a couple minutes, and do some cat-cows. Let me, again, go back to my list here.

Avoid sitting for too long. So some people's back pain, sitting down, is actually what makes them feel better. So I could be proven wrong on this, but I'm going based on this case that I had this week. The driving to work for over an hour, the sitting down to do admin work, that was the thing that always brought pain back. So we all have to sit at some point, right? Avoiding sitting for too long is what I'm saying here. When you are sitting, what you can do is put a bolster behind your low back, as long as that feels okay for you. Again, there's some people whose low back actually asking them to slouch here and there is what's helpful.

But for this specific person, they are a sloucher, and so putting a bolster behind their low back to keep them in a better posture has really gone a long way. Bringing the seat closer to the steering wheel so we don't have to reach as far. That one there, in this person's exam, they had a positive slumps test, which is basically when we put you in a slouchy position and we pull your leg out like a hamstring stretch, it reproduced back pain. So basically doing a slumps when you're driving. So what we want to do is try to minimize how much knee extension or how much of a hamstring stretch we are creating when we're reaching for the pedal.

And then movement snacks. So getting up, you know, at least every hour to do whatever rehab you were recommended, to go for a short little walk, to get some cat cows in, to lie down and belly breathe, just something where we're not just stuck in the seated position for hours on end. Getting up and moving around and picking something that feels good for you or go drink some more water. All of that stuff can really, really go a long, long way. If we do need to sit, find some movement snacks. I always tell people too, sometimes it's just annoying to have to get up and do something when you're in the middle of a task.

So pelvic rocks while seated. Just think about posterior tilt, anterior tilt. Some of you might be familiar with this. If you're not, Google it. We can do this while seated. And it can really, really help just get some better motion in the pelvis and in the spine while we are seated. Stress. I wanted to bring up stress because I actually had somebody else very similar presentation to what I'm talking about, but in the neck, where this particular person really is talking about how their stress is preventing them from healing. The fact that they could identify that was actually a pretty big thing.

I didn't have to say it. But we talked about, like, what do you have planned for the next few days? And just an insane schedule and things planned on the weekend where it's, you know, showing up to this and showing up to that and showing up for the grandkids here and doing this for my husband and doing that for my kids. Look at your list. See what needs to be prioritized and see what needs to be, what can be maybe rescheduled. Baseball games every weekend that you have to show up for and sit on a bleacher that's going to hurt your back or your neck. You know, there's going to be another one next weekend.

Is it possible maybe you can spend some time prioritizing a little sleep this weekend? Can you show up into the office for another session for some treatment? Look at your schedule and find ways to minimize stress during this time because stress and sleep are at the top of the list here. Stress, sleep, and movement. But stress and sleep, like, those are the things that are really, really hard to control. So take a peek at your list. Reschedule some things if you can. If you haven't considered that, please consider your stress, okay? Another thing is sleep, too. Sometimes it's just about prioritizing getting to bed on time.

Sometimes it's about, you know, crappy sleeper anyway, so it's really, really hard for me to get good sleep. And sometimes it's about, I want to sleep, but I'm so uncomfortable I can't. So people always ask me, you know, what's the best sleeping position? There isn't one. There really, really isn't one. Based on what they respond to during rehab, during treatment, I can recommend one. But I always tell people, I'll recommend a position for you. But if it affects your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep, then ignore what I recommended for you and fall asleep in whatever way you can. Because we just need you to sleep.

And then we can just, we can control what we can control while we're awake. So stress and sleep. If you haven't already thought about it, think about it. And voiding inflammatory or sensitive foods. This is not necessarily like my strong suit talking about nutritional stuff, but I think it's, you know, I have a nice network of people that I can refer to for this if I think it's super important for somebody and you need to be paying attention to food sensitivities. But I'm bringing this one up because I recently had an old deadlifting back injury from when I was in chiropractic school. And I irritated a disc in my low back and, you know, chiropractic adjustments were helpful, but they were temporary.

Some stretches and stuff were helpful. I stayed active. Things got better. The only time it ever really bothered me was first thing in the morning. But the intensity of that really changed drastically. There were times where I didn't. There were times where it was so bad I couldn't even take a deep breath. So bad I couldn't lay there any longer. It was very uncomfortable. For different reasons, I dove into working with the functional medicine doctor. And we avoided just, you know, the certain foods that most people are sensitive to or are allergic to. And the two big ones that I took out were gluten and dairy.

First thing I noticed in the first five days of avoiding those two food groups was that my back pain was gone. My anxiety levels were low. My headaches were gone. So, you know, old disc injuries, it's not that you're always doing something biomechanically to constantly recreate it or that, you know, you're not doing the right exercises. You don't have the right rehab program. You're not seeing the right provider. Maybe we need to be paying attention to the fact that there is something you are putting inside of your body that you don't realize you're sensitive to, which is creating a cascade of an inflammatory process.

And it's targeting this spot that has an injury. So, old disc injury for me is pretty much completely gone now. And anytime that I have red wine or anytime that I have dairy, first thing in the morning, my back pain is back. And it's gone the moment I get up and move. And it doesn't come back the next day as long as I avoid those things. So, I just want to plant the seed today. I have started to plant more seeds for the people that I'm seeing. Start to pay attention to if you feel like you're sensitive to anything that you were eating or drinking. You could consider yourself a healthy person. I know that I do.

And I just had no idea that there were certain things that I was this sensitive to, even if they're considered healthy. So, hope that seed is planted. Hope that helps you maybe think about something that hasn't been considered just yet. I think that's pretty much what I wanted to go over. I wanted to give you just a little ending here of, like, things to keep in mind. If I'm recommending stuff and you're trying it and you're like, I'm not sure if this is working or just anything with back, you should always be paying attention to if it's starting to travel further away from your spine, if it's starting to create weakness, if we're noticing numbness and tingling, if we're feeling like our balance is off or if we're extra clumsy, there's some bowel and bladder changes that you don't think is necessarily correlated.

For some reason, you're needing to go to the restroom more often, but, like, not a whole lot comes out, whatever it may be. Pay attention to these things and go ask for help if that's what's starting to happen. I think it's really, really important for us when we create these podcasts of, like, here's all the things that you can do that can be helpful. Here's some things to just also keep in mind where it would be really important for you to just stop and go see a healthcare professional if you're noticing some changes in the category of what I just mentioned. I'm doing laps in my room right now, recording this podcast, and I'm, like, kind of out of breath, so I'm going to end here.

If you guys want our help, we're doing discovery sessions, virtual or in person, and we can, if you're in a different state, reach out to us. There's ways that we can help you, even if you're out of the state, so email us, call us, let's set up a consult. We'll go from there. Have a good day, guys.