Can yoga cause/cure a hernia?

Hi John –

Thanks so much for posting your progress. I just joined this site because of this thread. I’ve had an inguinal hernia for just over a month and while researching found some other folks online who’ve used yoga to cure their hernias, including youtube videos and recommended poses. Other folks who’ve recovered describe a similar process of it gradually going away as you.

Before the hernia I wasn’t doing yoga regularly, I enjoy biking and felt some burning tearing while standing upright and pedaling hard uphill. Then in the shower I noticed the same symptoms you describe here. But the thing that really got my attention here was that the day before I’d played my trumpet for the first time in years, straining for high notes. I didn’t feel anything at that point but heck if it isn’t all related…

After a month of trying to strengthen the abdomen and slightly worsening symptoms I scheduled a consultation with the surgeon. I think it might take a year to recover but from some of the mesh horror stories it’s probably worth “watchful waiting” for a bit longer.

best regards,
Joe

Hi Billy,

Thanks for your reply, I’m sorry to disagree but;

The supposed dangers of mesh are nonsense, if you ask me. Had a long conversation with my doctor about that. It’s really safe. This is routine, effective surgery IF you have a GOOD SURGEON. Do your homework and make sure you get a great surgeon.

The Wall Street Journal reports that up to 30% of patients experience chronic pain
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203833004577249344022834000
so that doesn’t sound like “nonsense” to someone considering the surgery. You’re probably right that a good surgeon makes a big difference.

Can you repair the hernia without surgery? My opinion is no. A hernia is literally a tear; imagine a wet paper bag with a tear in it.

It’s not a matter of opinion, numerous people have fully recovered from hernias without surgery including John, the OP of this thread. They return to normal activity without any symptoms, even lifting heavy weights. Here is an article about this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3276927/ which concludes “Yoga therapy with selected asanas is effective in the treatment of reversible inguinal hernia.”

I do appreciate knowing that your surgery was a success, that’s encouraging – I’ve heard the same from a few others and I’m keeping my options open. I’m going to see what the surgeon says, and I’m increasing my yoga now that I’m comfortable with a few recommended poses.

best regards,
Joe

the 30 percent figure seems much higher than I would expect.

It was way higher than I expected also, it’s why I’m on this path and this website now.

I do not consider that I have “fully recovered” from my hernia — there is still a weakness in the abdominal wall at the site of the hernia.

My understanding is that a “hernia” is the protrusion, not the tear, so if you never have a protrusion then you no longer have a hernia. You might have a weakness that’s susceptible to becoming a hernia again, but only a bulge is a hernia.

But, the hernia doesn’t cause pain or restrict my activities — I still practice strenuous yoga, lift heavy objects, kayak, swim, bicycle, push cars when necessary, etc. I do almost everything except play my trumpet.

I consider that to be pretty much a full recovery and it’s what I’m hoping to achieve with or without surgery – get back to strenuous biking and lifting normal weights.

Joe, please let me know which asanas seem to be most helpful for you.

It’s too soon for me to say that this is healing me, but it does reverse the protrusion and relieve the symptoms. If you look on under “Which postures other people are recommending for hernia” on this page, http://healinghernia.com/therapy/yoga/
I’m doing mostly Setu Bandhasana and Sarvangasana. Also on that page there are postures to avoid that can make the hernia worse, most common of which is upward dog.

I know the fastest path to getting back on the bike is to have surgery asap. When I was younger I worked on cars and had the experience where after patching the cooling system, the pressure would spring a new leak at the next weak spot within a day or two. I’m concerned in my case patching the hernia would eventually lead to a new blowout somewhere else, and in the case of a human body it’d be better to strengthen the overall system than to patch it. At the same time I understand everyone’s body is different and it might not work for me.

I’ll try to keep you updated, Thanks for your encouragement!
-Joe

Great responses, everyone, thanks for the input.

I agree that the 30% figure is surprising. The article does mention that surgeon skill is important. I can also tell you that one of my neighbors had to have his surgery redone TWICE because it wasn’t done correctly.

Sometimes statistics can be misleading. And here’s what I mean by that in this case … my doctor was very clear in telling me that I might have post-op pain a full YEAR after the surgery. He said the body takes a long time to fully incorporate the mesh into your body.

So I think it’s very possible that 30% experience some pain months afterward and that’s considered normal, but when presented as it is in the article it sounds alarming.

And perhaps it IS. But I also know that many articles love to take anecdotal cases and try and widen them into catastrophic trends.

GREAT EXAMPLE: Read this article about yoga and you would think yoga is the most dangerous activity possible:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html?_r=0

Anyway, I would certainly look into all options and weigh everything for yourself. All I can tell you is that it worked out great for me, but I urge you to really get a doctor who’s well-regarded and TALK to him extensively about it.

I am all for non-surgery alternatives, so if you succeed going that route, more power to you.

To answer a couple of previous questions, yes, I can do backbends without pain but you should also know I don’t do “extreme” back bends. Never could, really, I’m not that advanced of a yogi!

But even if I did feel some extra restriction I hadn’t before, I decided ahead of time that I would be okay with whatever happened because I think it’s important to roll with the punches and not hold onto perfectionism.

And the reason I had both sides done is because my surgeon SUSPECTED I had a hernia on the other side, but he told me that he would not decide about the other one till he got in there with the laparascope and see for himself. Turns out there was enough of a hernia there to repair, so he did that side as well.

Insurance covered it, yes, but I had to pay a LOT because of the plan I had. Cost me about $4K, OUCH. That was the only pain that was significant!

Thanks again and keep us posted ….

Hi Jbigler –
I apologize it took so long to come back and reply, been meaning to for a while now.

Thank you for the update – I’m sorry to hear your symptoms have come back! Early on in my hernia I read that anything stretching your front (especially like a back-bend!) is a no-go with a hernia. I even tried some planks and felt it pop out, so I don’t do those at all, same with pushups.

On the other hand, this Bridge Pose / Setu Bandha Sarvangasana is the key for me. If I need to cough or sneeze, I try to go into this pose. After a few deep and relaxing breaths it’s very easy to keep the hernia from popping out even from a strong cough. I do this immediately before and immediately after I shower. I also do it whenever the hernia is bothering me if I can, sometimes in my office at work, sometimes on the ground before I get in my car to drive. It seems to put the guts back up into place and depending what I’m doing (sitting mostly) they may stay good for a while.

Thanks for the information from Greg about the diet he’s using. I don’t know if I’ll try that but I’m going to file it away since this could be a long process… Back in November I started taking Chinese herbal pills called “bu zhong yi qi pian” – a friend who is a Chinese herbalist recommended this. He said in Chinese medicine they consider hernia to be a “lowering of the Qi” and this pill is supposed to reverse that. So I got some and the bottle recommended taking 5 at a time several times a day, so I took 5 and went to bed. BIG MISTAKE. I fell asleep but this is some sort of “upper” and I ended up grinding my teeth so bad that my jaw hurt for a week (and then my dentist put me on invisalign, another story!) but back to these pills – they actually do seem to help quite a bit! I started taking them 3 or 4 at a time twice a day and it seemed to make the hernia smaller, more easily reduced and I felt more positive about the prospects of healing.

I was also trying a variety of exercises but despite all that my situation still seemed to be slowly getting worse – over the holidays I came down with something, ended up throwing up and after that the hernia was bigger and more uncomfortable than before. With the stress of the holidays and just wanting to lie on my back all the time, I felt that I would get surgery as soon as possible. Then around New Years I sort of returned to the previous state – it was not as uncomfortable and easier to reduce again.

Early in January I spoke to the surgeon’s nurse and she said it’s up to me, I can wait as long as I like, it would be easy to renew the surgery authorization, and there was no reason not to ride a bicycle for exercise as long as I wasn’t feeling pain. So I started exercising more and I went for a light one hour bike ride, after the ride the hernia was bigger than ever, that was disturbing so I have kept my bike rides to about a mile or two at most since then.

I also was exercising my abdominals very strenuously and at some point i strained something around the right pectoral, middle of my chest would suddenly feel a tearing pain while doing situps, so I’ve really been taking it easy for a few weeks now with regard to the abdomen.

Meanwhile, I’ve found a diet that works pretty well; 95% vegetarian, no breakfast other than liquids, & I try to make sure my last meal is lentils; this has kept me very regular and (at least for me) that is one of the biggest keys to minimizing the hernia. I also need to avoid certain “doughy” foods such as pizza 🙁

Regarding surgery, I looked into the “mesh-free, tension-free” Desarda technique, there are only a handful of doctors in the US doing this, talked to the office of one Dr. Robert Burns in Southern California; they told me that 99% of the hernias he does are mesh but he does do Desarda if the patient asks for it, ballpark cost around $4K. They did mention that two of their Desarda patients (out of how many I don’t know) had recurrence. It seems that the chance of recurrence is higher with Desarda and the risk of chronic post-operative issues is comparable, so I guess that’s why it hasn’t caught on in the US where mesh is readily available.

I went back and asked my surgeon about Desarda and they hadn’t heard of it. They said they do have an option for biological mesh, so I asked for more information and they told me I’d have to come back in, needing another referral from my primary. I think he is punishing me for asking too many questions.

In the meanwhile, despite the lack of exercise for a couple weeks now and the fact I’ve been laying off the bu zhong yi qi pians, the hernia is in a decent maintenance mode; about 5 days out of the week it doesn’t bother me very much and once in a while I eat the wrong thing or sneeze too many times or over-exert myself or stand up too long, or get stressed out about something and then it gets bigger and uncomfortable.

It still sucks but at least after 4 months I am used to this slower lifestyle. I’ll try to come back with another update in a few months or if anything changes. I’d like to think I could still try to heal myself naturally but given that the “hernia bible” forum seems to have gone dormant, and you’re not fully healed, we’re back down to just Falcon Blanco. So I am probably going to need surgery eventually, but I’m going to keep trying in the meanwhile.

cheers,
Joe

Thank you Gabrielle!

To be honest I probably would have had surgery already if my doctor’s office been more service-oriented. I’m still slowly on the path of my HMO, now being referred back to my primary (whose office didn’t return my message so I need to call back this week) to get the referral, to go in and ask “what is the name / brand / ingredients of the biomesh you use?”.

Now that I have to go back to the primary I will ask to be referred to the other surgeon (he told me he had 2 in the beginning). I may eventually find a specialist outside the HMO and just pay out of pocket, since my cost with the HMO is still pretty high. For what I have to pay out of pocket, I could probably fly to India and have it done for less!

As far as what would make me speed up the process? If the hernia becomes incarcerated (can’t be reduced) then I would need to deal with that relatively quickly. A few times I thought that might be happening but the bridge pose has always worked so far.

I read something recently that the hernia will become incarcerated because of scar tissue building up and holding it in place. This made me wonder if perhaps Falcon and anyone else who healed naturally might’ve used this scarring to somehow hold the hernia in place on the inside.

So while I’m researching this and trying to get my questions from the doctors, I’m also trying to get back to slowly exercising the lower abdomen, worst case I read it’s good to have a strong abdomen for recovery from surgery. I think I will also start taking the pills again (bu zhong yi qi pian, gelatin capsules, vitamin C 1000).

If I can maintain a lifestyle where it’s staying small and not bothering me much I could probably continue to postpone indefinitely, but if things keep happening to make it more uncomfortable then it’s only a matter of weeks or months at most.

Namaste

Greetings all,

Just an update, I had hernia repair surgery on May 21st. Recovery was painful but luckily my wife took good care of me and now I am beginning to start biking again.

Of course I’m concerned about getting another hernia or re-injuring the first one, so I’m taking it slowly.

I wish I had been able to find a way to recover without surgery, but felt I had to try the surgery to get back to a point where I can exercise more regularly again. Hopefully after 6 weeks, I’m just about there now.

best wishes to all,
Joe

I’m glad that you’re on the mend, but I’m distressed that you had a painful recovery from the surgery and are just now getting back to biking, after 6 weeks. I was hoping hernia repair would be much easier!

Was this a laparoscopic procedure or a traditional procedure with a single sliced opening? Were there any particular complications? Were you able to have both sides repaired at the same time, or only one?

I only had a hernia on the right side, it was an open mesh repair. I have a scar about 2.5″ long, just below the belt line. The doctor said I had a very large hernia. Fortunately there have been no particular complications. There was also a huge swollen ridge that gradually subsided. Part of the procedure is cutting a nerve, the doctor said this should fully recover after about 3 months. It left an area from the incision to my upper leg numb with burning / tingling as it recovers.

The pain meds (norco?) constipated me and didn’t make me sleep, so I quit them after the first day. The first week it was painful to stand up and walk. I didn’t drive my car for two weeks. After that I was back at work, walking up and down steps and getting around slowly. Day by day it’s been improving to where I usually don’t notice it now. I did ride 1 mile on the road after 4 weeks. The incision area still felt sore at that point, but I’m ready to ride some trails now.

At this point my quality of life definitely is better than before the surgery, when I was constantly having to hold it in and lie down to reduce it constantly. Not yet to the point where life’s as good as before the hernia, but hopefully getting there with the exercise beginning!

Hi John

Great news. I think that Bikram yoga and the STATIC hot yoga poses are excellent for consolidation and strength building. They are great for building core strength, IF (and I mean this most definitively) and only if one knows how to engage the core in the first place. Sucking in the stomach is a hit and miss affair for core strength building. This would come as quite a shock to many people. But maybe you know somebody out there who has great abs – a real six-pack racked guy – yet has been debilitated and bed-ridden with back ache.

I think that avoiding the hernia-challenging, or more correctly hernia-exacerbating poses for you is the practical and sensible thing to do!

Now all I want to know is … can you play the trumpet again? :cheese: (Our daughter took it up a year ago and she loves it!)

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂