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Should you get an epidural
steroid injection?
Are there other options?
Pinched nerves and
bulging spinal discs
can cause debilitating pain.
But they can also create serious
structural problems in the body
by weakening important
core stability muscles
around the spine and other
muscles that may cause
your body to move incorrectly.
When this happens, a
bulging disc in your neck
may cause tendinitis
in the elbow
or a pinched nerve in your back
may lead to hip, knee, or ankle
problems.
It's easy to see why so many
people require treatment
for a disc related problem.
But research now shows that
the most common treatments
are causing serious
long-term complications.
Today's surgical
solutions involve
cutting away the bulging
portion of a spinal disc.
But this rarely helps
patients and may set them up
for more severe disc
problems in the future.
To understand why,
think of your disk
as a bicycle tire and tube.
Cutting out a bulging
disc is like sanding down
a bump on the tire caused
by a weak sidewall.
It reduces the
size of the bulge.
But the tire becomes
more likely to fail,
just like surgically
removing a disc bulge makes
the disc more likely to fail.
In the 1980s, doctors began
injecting high-dose steroids
into the spine in a
nonsurgical procedure known
as an epidural
steroid injection.
It seemed like a good
idea at the time.
But it is now known to
produce serious side effects.
You see, if the
height of a matchbook
represents the amount of
steroid your body naturally
uses to control
inflammation, the amount
of steroids in an
epidural injection
would be the height of
the Empire State Building.
In a recent study of
middle-aged and older women,
the high dose steroids used
in a single epidural shot
hurt their bone density and
increased their fracture risk
by 29%.
In another study, a short course
of oral steroids increased
the risk of a severe bone
disease by about 400%
and a staggering 21,000%
after being on these drugs
for a year,
Here's the good news, Regenexx
PL-Disc and Regenexx DDD
are nonsurgical procedures
that utilize the natural growth
factors from your
own blood platelets
to reduce inflammation
and help heal injuries.
These growth factors
are like espresso shots
for local repair cells,
making the cells work harder
to help heal the
damaged tissues.
And the results
speak for themselves.
In our registry-based
study, patients
reported much better function
at three and six months
following the PL procedure than
those who had steroid shots.
So before you let someone
inject that Empire State
Building of steroids
into your spine or sand
down that bulging
bike tire, consider
the benefits of these
next-generation Regenexx disc
procedures and let
your own growth factors
put you back on the course to an
active and pain-free lifestyle.
