12/06/2026
You have probably been given a name for your pain.
A disc bulge. Degeneration. Sciatica. Rotator cuff issue. Maybe several names, from several different practitioners.
Here is a question worth sitting with.
If ten different mechanics looked under the bonnet of your car and gave you ten completely different diagnoses for the same noise — would you trust any of them?
Because that is essentially what happens in the pain industry. Same symptom. Ten explanations. Ten treatments. Not one agreement on what actually caused it.
And here is what none of them tell you.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine examined 98 people with no back pain whatsoever. Zero pain. Completely fine.
52% had bulging discs on their MRI scan.
More than half of pain-free people have the finding that is routinely used to explain why you are in pain.
The disc is not the cause. The disc is reporting the pressure being placed on it by the surrounding muscle tissue. When that tissue is stressed — contracted, shortened, oxygen-deprived from years of accumulated load — it crushes the disc unevenly. The disc reports it. You call it pain.
The cause is in the muscle. The muscle is responding to something that has been building for a long time. And no scan, no adjustment, no injection addresses that.
Once you understand this — really understand it — you stop looking for the next practitioner who might finally fix you. You start asking the question that actually leads somewhere.
What created the stress pattern in my tissue in the first place?
That question is where real change begins. And it is what everything I do is built around.
If driving to a discovery call: "Book a free 20-minute call and I'll show you exactly what has been creating your pattern. Link in bio. https://book.painfreethatsme.com/book-your-discovery-call
Discover the real causes of back pain, stress patterns, disc pressure, and practical pain relief strategies with Gary Little's proven approach.
