Can Painful Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Actually Be Cured? (Controversial)

In this video I’m going to answer the question Can painful lumbar spinal stenosis be cured. This is a controversial topic in the medical community because many healthcare professionals believe that once spinal stenosis is present, there’s permanent damage that cannot be undone. And if you’re dealing with the symptoms of it, like when people typically get in lumbar spinal stenosis is pain, numbness, tingling going down the legs, not always back pain, although there is back pain in many, many of these cases.

And the common thinking is that if you have lumbar spinal stenosis, it’s only going to get worse no matter what you do, no matter what treatment you get, except for surgery. However, there are many cases of people that have never had surgery, and then began to do the right natural treatments. And they begun to get better over time.

So let’s break this down. I’m going to go next into what other problems could be happening at the same time as your lumbar spinal stenosis. Whether or not surgery really is effective and which lumbar spinal stenosis patients are best suited for surgery. Then we’ll talk about finding a cure versus healing because there’s separate things and then I’ll tell you about what to do to treat the problem so that you might heal naturally.

So what are the problems might be happening at the same time as the lumbar spinal stenosis? Well with lumbar spinal stenosis, which if you don’t know exactly what it is, I’m going to give you a super quick overview. Here’s the lumbar spine. stenosis just means the spaces where the nerves are traveling are narrowing, it could be because they’re literally getting smaller or the vertebrae are shifting on each other, which pinches the opening where the nerves pass.

There’s two types of stenosis you can have central stenosis, which is deep inside where the spinal cord is, then you can have lateral or it’s also known as pyramidal stenosis, which is where the openings on the side of the spine where these nerves come out on the sides, that space is closing off.

And typically what sets up stenosis is muscle imbalances that cause other problems in addition to stenosis problems, like lumbar osteoarthritis or arthritis in the lower back, stiff muscles that are on the back here, disc herniations and pinched nerves. It may be that if you’ve been diagnosed with lumbar spinal stenosis, you’ve probably had an x ray or an MRI. And when they looked at your X ray MRI findings, stenosis was one of the things in there along with degenerative changes, disc herniations, arthritis.

Arthritis is something that is thrown out there as well a little bit different than arthritis, and many other conditions. All of these problems are rooted in the same root issue, which is a muscle imbalance affecting them. And depending on which of those problems is the priority, the biggest problem to deal with, and also how far gone the problems are, whether it’s, you know, the main priority that’s been there for a long time and it’s really severe on the MRI or X ray, or maybe it’s not that severe, it’s more moderate or mild.

Those factors need to be considered when determining whether or not it’s truly the stenosis problem that’s causing your back pain or your pelvis pain. Another issue that is most commonly seen and masks as stenosis is sciatica. Because you can get pain down into the legs of stenosis, that’s usually the main problem people feel they feel weakness and pain into the legs. And they often say I can’t walk in stand for very long, I feel like I have to go sit down. And once I sit, I feel better.

That can happen with sciatica as well. So there may be some pelvis issues that are pinching the nerves for the sciatic problem as well. Sifting through all of these issues, takes a serious examination, the healthcare professional that you got and see, may not know to look at all these issues and how to decipher the symptoms. The what tests to do there’s so much to look at in order to determine is this more of a sciatica problem? Is it a true stenosis problem? Or is the arthritis or the disc or the pinched nerve, a bigger deal than the actual stenosis?

So that being said, before you proceed into any surgery, make sure you do your due diligence and getting this problem investigated by multiple healthcare providers definitely get at least a second opinion, if not a third opinion. And I would go outside the typical pathway. If you went to a family doctor, and they referred you to an orthopedic surgeon for this problem, or an orthopod is what they sometimes say. You might go to a physical therapist, especially a manual physical therapist, that’s my specialty.

I am probably best suited to handle this problem naturally without surgery, although I have my limitations, and if there’s a severe enough case, I do have to refer out to the surgeon, which let’s talk about that. Does surgery truly cure Spinal stenosis, there’s a couple of different procedures that are done.

The main one that’s done is called a laminectomy procedure. And the idea for that one is they cut off one of the vertebrae here, the back part of the vertebrae, right, right where this bone protrudes out and sticks out, they cut it off. And they’re decompressing the spine that way, by allowing for some space around the nerve. If you have central stenosis, the other thing they can do is shave bone and in cut Disc Golf right on the side, if you have more of a pyramidal or lateral stenosis here to leave space for this nerve.

And another surgery that sometimes is done is a fusion surgery where they put rods and screws, and they connect two bones together to permanently fuse them. Now these surgeries, of course, are theoretically supposed to take pressure off the spine.

But you have to ask the question, what brought the pressure on to begin with because it can’t just be age, because what about the vertebrae above or the one right below, if you have one below, it’s not already your bottom most, it could be that there’s something going on with the forces with the balance of muscles, that’s causing that particular area to get stenotic or to have stenosis.

So getting surgery might be a good thing. If you have an extreme case of stenosis. If you get an x ray and MRI done, and it is obvious and you’ve done your due diligence, you’ve seen two or three professionals. And they all agree that there is no other way out of this except having a surgery right now, then go for it get the surgery, it’s probably a good thing if multiple health care professionals all agree, but if you have more of a moderate or mild case, then you have a shot at possibly improving this non surgically. And what it’s going to come down to likely is taking pressure off the spine.

By getting the muscles in the right balance. Often it’s abdominal muscles that need to get stronger and gluteal muscles. And by the way, I’m not going to cover exercises in this video. If you’re looking for lumbar stenosis exercises and stretches, there is a playlist in the description below that’s got that for you of all our exercises and stretches are in that playlist as well as more information that will be helpful for you for your lumbar spinal stenosis problem. And I want to make a distinction between a cure and healing.

Those are two different things. Finding a cure for something means that you have eradicated the problem, there’s no sign of it anymore, the body has normalized. And when it comes to lumbar spinal stenosis, we’ve had people here in our clinic, we happens all the time where they come in with lumbar spinal stenosis problems. And by the time we finished with them, they’re walking for as long as they want, they’re much more balanced in their spine muscles.

And they feel fantastic. And they would probably tell you, they’re over their lumbar spinal stenosis problem. However, we have not we have not had this happen. But if we were to send somebody back for an MRI, they just don’t do it because you’re feeling better. But if we were to send somebody back for an MRI or an x ray, chances are that they’re probably going to look the same on that MRI or X ray that they had just a few months ago before they started shooting with us.

And the reason for that is the structure of the spine, the discs of the bones has not changed, but we’ve changed the pressures on them. That’s what helps people to heal. And that’s the difference between cure and heal the bones, the tissues, all the structures inside are going to look the same, they’re not going to be cured. Meaning the vertebrae look like a 20 year old’s vertebrae.

If you’re 50, or 60 or beyond, they’re still going to look like your bones at your age, you’re just going to feel better, that means you healed and it’s the same thing as like getting scars on your skin. If you were to cut your skin open, it’s not going to probably look the same ever again, you’re going to get a scar. But that’s a good thing.

Because that scar closes up your skin and your skin will be just fine. You can still do everything you need to do without worrying about an opening in your skin. Same thing with the spine if you can heal it. And even though you take an x ray or an MRI and it looks the same, who cares if you can do everything that you want to do you have been healed rather than cured. Now, how do you heal lumbar spinal stenosis?

Well, I’ve alluded to it already, you need to fix that muscle imbalance, you absolutely have to get the right muscles stronger and do not at all focus on the muscles that are already strong. And what I mean by that is the back muscles. Oftentimes with lumbar spinal stenosis, people want to get these back muscles stronger.

Even healthcare professionals will tell their patients to work on the back muscles here. And they only get worse over time. They may not feel worse in the moment. In fact, they may they may even get some temporary relief just because we’re getting a different sensation in the area. But if these back muscles are already big, you don’t want to make them any bigger. They’re just causing more pressure on the nerves, more pressure on the joints and all the spaces where the nerves Travel.

You don’t want to pressurize that anymore. If you get the abdominal muscles stronger and the glutes stronger, it makes a world of a difference. Now in our playlist that’s linked below you can find exercises and stretches to begin to get those muscles stronger and unsafe in the stiff tight muscles. And we’ve also got a program called the 28 Day Back Health And Wellness Boost Program.

And this is a program that I’ve developed and just to introduce myself, in case you’ve never met me before here on YouTube, my name is Dr. David Middaugh. I’m a specialist physical therapist I specialize in helping people stay healthy, active and mobile while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections and pain medication. And that’s what this whole channel is dedicated to. We make videos on helping people avoid surgery, injections and pain medications.

So this program that we’ve developed the 20 day back health and wellness boosts program is just that it’s boosting your back health and boosting your back wellness. And it’s designed to fix those muscle imbalances that are the root problem of lumbar spinal stenosis. You can find out more details about it in the description below.

Hope this video was helpful for you. Please give us a thumbs up like comments and please share it if you have any comments, questions concerns, please drop it in the comments below. We’d get back to them as fast as we can. Thanks for watching and I’ll catch in the next video friends. Bye