What Causes Pain Around the Ribs and Back Symptoms? How Can This be Treated?

The thoracic spine and ribs are like a “no man’s” land for many physicians, including spine experts. While many physicians are comfortable treating and diagnosing neck and low back problems when it comes to things like pain around the ribs and back symptoms, they draw a blank. So today we’ll focus on this problem through…
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How to Heal a Herniated Disc Naturally

Does your body already know how to heal a herniated disc naturally? Today I’ll share yet another MRI result that’s important to me as this gentleman’s large herniated disc would have needed surgery at one point in my early career and now because of advances in natural disc healing it usually doesn’t need surgery. Let’s…
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Problems with Artificial Disc Replacement? New Research

Artificial disc replacement has been all the rage for the past 5-10 years. The idea is that it’s supposed to help reduce the side effects of bigger surgeries like fusion. Is that true? Are there problems with artificial disc replacement? What is an Artificial Disc and What Problem Should It Solve? Your spine has discs…
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Subtalar Fusion? Do You Really Need This Surgery?

The subtalar joint is sort of the red-headed stepchild of the ankle. Most of the focus is usually on it’s bigger brother, the main tibiotalar joint. However, arthritis in the smaller subtalar joint can cause loads of pain and disability. That pain can lead some patients to consider subtalar fusion. However, do you really need…
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New Stanford Study: Risk of Dying from COVID Is 7 Times LESS than Spine Surgery

The lethality of COVID-19 should be driving our public health policy. Meaning, if this thing is really lethal we should be doing what we’re doing and erring on the side of staying shut down. If it’s much less lethal, we need to be thankful that we gave our health system a chance to catch up…
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The Curious Case of the Typical/Atypical L5-S1 Disc Herniation

If you read this blog you know that I often write about what I experience each day. This week I saw a patient with an L5-S1 disc bulge/herniation who seemed to be a mystery to his physicians but in fact, just had a slightly atypical problem that presented typically. Meaning he seemed to be a…
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The Vagus Nerve, Neck Pain, Anxiety, Headaches, and Depression

We’ve seen neck pain patients for years with lots of seemingly unrelated symptoms. Many have suffered from depression, anxiety, headaches, and some even cardiac problems like runs of tachycardia. So what’s causing all of this? Let’s delve into some new research on the vagus nerve. We’ve seen neck pain patients for years with lots of…
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Stem Cell Treatment for Neuropathy? Can You Tell a Scam from Real?

We get sent questions all of the time by patients. One recent question was about the difference between what a clinic chain says it offers as stem cell treatment for neuropathy and what we do. Since this is also a great way to explain the way to look for clinics that have high expertise in…
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