Sure, your neck holds up your head, but it’s also responsible for enabling many of your senses — you turn your head to see, hear, and even smell. When there’s a problem in your neck, not only is the discomfort hard to bear, your world can become much smaller.
Many of us associate a herniated disc with the lower back, but the problem can crop up just as easily in your cervical spine, or neck. Just as a problematic disc in your lumbar spine can lead to sensations in your leg, symptoms can develop in your arm when the herniation is in your neck.
You want to stand tall, but pain in your lower back when you’re upright is forcing you over into a hunched position. This is one of the classic signs of lumbar spinal stenosis, which affects about 11% of older adults in the United States.
You wake each morning and, instead of jumping out of bed with exuberance, you move gingerly thanks to back or neck pain (or both). It may be of some comfort to know that up to 23% of adults around the world are experiencing the same chronic spine discomfort.
If you’ve had a herniated disc before, you understand that it is a painful condition that’s best avoided in the first place. If you haven’t, take our word for it. Whatever the case, you want to understand whether you’re at risk for a herniated disc down the road.
