One of the most common treatments for a herniated disc prescribed is the use of cortisone injections. The most common method that these are given to an individual 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 injections a good option when it comes to the treatment of a herniated disc? And what is the difference between a steroid injection and an epidural?

The truth of the matter is that every therapy has a time and a place when trying to help with this condition, and whether you choose to have in injection of any kind 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 understand what is actually going on when you suffer with a bulging disc so you realize why a health care provider would recommend this course of action to start with.

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

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

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 affected area, the purpose of which is to bring fresh oxygen and nutrients to the area for healing purposes.

And although this sounds good on the surface, 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 lead to more pain for the individual suffering with a slipped disc.

The reason a health care provider would recommend a 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 significant side effects to steroid injections, the main one being that steroids can eat away at the surrounding joints and lead to further problems with that area of the back 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 physicians will recommend an epidural instead of a steroid injection. An epidural is just an anesthetic, which means that it numbs the inflamed 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 typically much safer.

However, in both cases you have to realize that your relief will typically be temporary. Both steroid and epidural injections will mask the pain, but they do not actually heal the problem (which is the slipped 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 slipped disc, and many will actually go about their business because they think they’re healed, and then the problem just becomes worse over time.

As a treatment for a herniated disc, the success rate of these types of injections is about 50%, and the relief you experience will generally 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 treatments for a bulging disc. If you’d like to see all 20 videos in this series, you can click the following link (treatment for a herniated disc).