Treatment For A Herniated Disc: How Effective Are Cortisone Injections For Helping My Pain?

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January 29, 2010

One of the most common treatments for a bulging disc recommended is the use of steroids. The most common method that these are given to a patient is in the form of an injection. But anyone who has done any research about this treatment knows that it can be a little controversial.

So, are pain injections a good option when it comes to the treatment of a protruded disc? And what is the difference between a cortisone or other steroid injection and an epidural?

The truth of the matter is that every treatment has its time and its place when working with this condition, and whether you choose to have in injection of any type really depends on your ultimate goal. But before you make your decision, it’s important to review all the facts about your treatment options.

First, it’s important that you have a grasp of what is actually going on when you suffer with a bulging disc so you understand why a physician would recommend this course of action to begin with.

When a disc bulges, it will tend to apply pressure on one of the nerves of the spine. This is actually what can make this condition very painful, because the nerves are very sensitive to pressure of any type.

This is also why the pain associated with a protruding disc tends to be a radiating type of pain. For example, if you have a protruding disc in your neck, typically the pain will not just stay in your neck. It will also tend to travel into the shoulders and arms, possibly even lead to a headache and other problems as well.

When you have pressure on a nerve, the body will initiate a process called inflammation to try and heal the injured area. What happens is that the body will send a lot of blood to the damaged area, the purpose of which is to bring fresh oxygen and nutrients to the area for healing purposes.

And although this sounds like a good plan, if you have a lot of blood in the area, it will swell up and cause more pressure to be applied to the nerves. So, this process can result in more pain for the individual suffering with a protruding disc.

The reason a physician would prescribe a cortisone or other steroid injection for this condition is because all steroids have an anti-inflammatory effect on the body. So they will slow the rush of blood to the area, reduce the swelling that surrounds the nerve, and this is how they provide relief.

However, there are some serious side effects to steroid injections, the main one being that steroids can eat away at the surrounding joints and result in further problems with that area of the spine in the future. This is why you aren’t able to have more than 3 injections of steroids per year.

This is also the reason that many doctors will prescribe an epidural instead of a steroid injection. An epidural is just an anesthetic, which means that it numbs the painful nerve and calms it down so your pain is decreased.

Epidurals don’t have that negative side effect that steroid injections have, so they are usually much safer.

However, in both cases you have to understand that your relief will usually be temporary. Both steroid and epidural injections will mask the pain, but they do not actually heal the condition (which is the protruding disc).

This can be very deceiving for people, because we tend to associate pain with the problem, and most individuals would think that because the pain is gone, the problem must be gone. Well, this isn’t actually the case with a protruding disc, and many will actually go about their business because they think they’re ok, and then the condition just becomes worse over time.

As a bulging disc therapy, the success rate of these types of injections is about 50%, and the relief you experience will usually last up to 3 months. Some people don’t experience any relief, while others experience relief that lasts longer than 3 months.

The video above is 1 in a series of 20 that I’ve developed to answer the most frequently asked questions that individuals have about bulging disc treatments. If you’d like to see all 20 videos in this series, you can click the following link (treatment for a herniated disc).

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