Dr. Stephen Courtney - What Is A Herniated Disk?
Channel: Dr. Stephen Courtney
Date: 01/11/2017

www.CourtneyMD.com
Dr. Stephen Courtney is a Board Certified Orthopedic Spine Surgeon treating neck and back disorders. His clinic is located in Plano, Texas.
Disk herniation is very, very commonly diagnosed because a lot of people get it. Majority of people don’t need operation on it. But when that disk blows out against the location where the disk goes and what nerve it’s hitting. It’s also about what levels. The most common level that blows out is L5-S1, and that would go down your back of your butt, back of your thigh down to your calf. A different one would be L45 which would go in front of your thigh, down the front of your shin bone, down to your big toes. So there’s different patterns of pain that comes from each particular disk segment.

Activity aggravates them a lot, the twisting and turning. I see a lot of middle age patients that come through here, that’s when it starts. “I used to do this, used to do that.” What’s happening is you’re getting older. You just don’t know it. So that’s when the disk slowly start the early phases of degeneration. There’s little painful cracks in the disk space, that starts the process.