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What Causes a Herniated Disc?

What Causes a Herniated Disc? (0:52)

Despite what you might think, no single event typically results in a herniated disc. In this video, Andy Hecht, M.D., co-director of Spine Surgery at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, talks about the risk factors for getting a herniated disc.

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Most of the time there's no single event, occasionally there are events, if you had an accident, you fell, you injured yourself playing sports, but most of the time it's sort of like the last strand, well today I sneezed, I lifted something, and all of a sudden the last covering of that jelly donut opened, and the jelly came out, and you make the association that it was that last event, that must have done it, and very often it's something as benign as a sneeze, it's such a common problem, we see it all the time, and the good news is that most of the time it gets better.