Diagnosing Yourself

It is essential to get help from your doctor regarding treatment of your herniated disc, but you may want to know beforehand if in fact you are suffering from this condition.  To know this, consider the symptoms of a herniated disc in the first place.

• When no nerve is involved, you may have a lower back pain or back ache.  In some cases, there is no noticeable pain at all.
  
• If there is nerve touching, you may have pain or numbness in the area.  You may also feel weakened by it.
   
• Pain that runs through your buttocks region and down into the leg even to the ankle and foot is caused by too much pressure on the sciatic nerve.  Lower back pain may also be evident here.
  
• Pain that is in the lowest rib area.
  
• Numbness and pain in the arms, chest and the shoulders

If you have leg pain, this could be a herniated disc if you have pain in just one leg. It may start all of a sudden or it may have taken some time to come on and done so gradually.  You may also have pain at some points and not at others.  It can get worse or cause that shooting pain feeling especially with sudden moves such as coughing or a straining to go to the bathroom.  What's more, when you are sitting for a long period of time or you are twisting your body, this too can bring on the pain that you feel.

You may also have symptoms such as a tingling and weakness in the affected areas.  You can often feel pain that is relieved by switching positions or by lying down.  In some cases, very deep pain in muscles can be evident as can muscle spasms.