@gently Thanks for your comments, but to be more accurate the painting was done in watercolor, and because the disc ruptured into the central canal which is where the bone spurs grew, there was no way to get to that surgically except for going through the bad disc. I know there are surgical procedures that trim extruded disc material, but the rupture needs to be accessible without destroying the disc such as rupturing into the foramen. I guess there is also laminectomy, but that would leave the bone spurs in place which were on the front on the spinal cord like a knife edge and bending my neck forward across them was causing an electric shock. You can't go through the spinal cord from the back to get to the bone spurs or ruptured nucleus. There is also the aging factor and a damaged disc that has small cracks in it from an injury dries out in time as all discs do, and these cracks can open up weakening the fibrous outer layers. The description of sitting on a ball was just to describe how pressure can change when weight is not centered. I wasn't doing that for therapy. It was just to illustrate how the pressure on the end plate of a vertebral bone isn't distributed equally if a disc is bulging. The disc bulge can also rub when you turn your head and I used to hear that in my neck before the rupture. By the time I had surgery, my disc was collapsed by 50% which made the foramen smaller, so if I side bent my neck, it would hit the nerves with a burning pain. There wasn't anything there to be removed by the surgeon, it was just the proximity of the vertebral bones because the disc was thinner.

I don't think there is a way to prevent this from happening after an injury. My experience is the natural aging process when you are years down the road from an injury. Discs do not have a blood supply which means lower oxygen levels in that tissue and discs don't heal themselves on their own. What I understand that does seem to help is to deal with any muscular issues that pull the spine out of alignment such as straightening the lordotic curve in the neck. I had physical therapy that did address this and with myofascial release to release tension held in the muscles. Bones are just going to go where the muscles pull them, so that cause must be addressed if it creates misalignment. In spite of all of that, good physical therapy, and maintaining good posture, the disc still ruptured and my path to spine surgery began. There is some literature that occasionally describes a disc recovering after it began bulging, and I have experienced that too with a thoracic disc that is no longer described as bulging on my MRI reports after my years of PT. The MFR therapy is body wide and deals with alignment and regaining functional movement. Sometimes, there is traction during therapy too, not with devices, but with my therapist's hands. I do think cervical discs are more fragile because of being smaller and having a greater range of normal movement, so these discs are providing cushioning on quite a great range of movement.

A chiropractor did do an adjustment on my neck only once, and it hurt. That was earlier on, but it was after the whiplash. I never did that again and I've always wondered if it contributed to degeneration of the injured disc. He was treating the trigger points in my neck and shoulders for thoracic outlet syndrome and wanted to do that as well. My physical therapist also treated trigger points and addressed all the fascial issues as well as strengthening muscles that work in opposition to muscles that were causing issues. I still continue to do this stretching on my own to maintain what I have. So the question under consideration is that no one knows how weak a bulging disc is. It shows up on an MRI, so we know it's changed from it's normal state.

Recently, I have also heard that Mayo has a chiropractor in their rehab department who does myofascial release. That was mentioned by a patient here on Connect.