There are a few memebers on this board hat attribute pre-diabetes to their PN. Maybe a change in diet would help you, and maybe also look at a supplement that stabalises blood sugars like Chromium & Vitamin D?

As far as surgery is concerned, I now know 5 people including myself who have undergone the operation. I also have a top surgeon meself over here. What happens is they remove the prolapsed disc material, and ofcourse that would release the pressure from any pinched nerve roots immediately.

So if you had sciatica and problems with your legs due to the herniated discs that would most likely resolve. But...once your back is damaged, it will always be your achilles heel... operation or no operation. My operation gave me relief for about 2 years. Then I started having back pain again,and 8 years on I have the same 2 discs reherniate. Me dad has had 2 operations on the same discs for the same reason. Me cousin has had her operation last just 4 years and no is trying to have another one.

Me surgeon told me I have a good degree of scar tisue which has built up in the old opertaion site,and now I have limited mobility and ofcourse some athritis. So the doctor that advises you to do everything conservative first, is probably the wisest, as he is also recognising that people have operations because they sometimes get to the end of their rope.

By the time I had my operaton, I was on the phone to my parents crying every night. I was having massages daily. I was begging my 75 year old grandmother to masssage my back. I couldn't even hold my child. My body was twisted and in spasm. I couldn't sleep or eat, and I was popping pain killers most likely to dangerous doses. I had lost all touch with reality. When I finally saw the surgeon who was to perform the operation, I couldn't even get on the table for an examination, nor drive myself there, and I burst into tears when he shook my hand. My husband and my father had to carry me to the hospital as I was unable to walk by that time. People looked at me in pitty, and always offered me a seat or a chair everywhere I went. An elderly woman got up from her seat on the bus and had offered it to me. I was so desperate that I even accepted it. I had home delivery of groceries.

After the operation, I actually walked out of the hospital.

So yes, I do not regret the operation. And if one gets to the point of being so disabled, than what else really matters? If someone told me that eating rat faeces would have cured me I would have gladly done it.

But go into this with your eyes open, and understand that this may not be a permanent cure. If you have young children it is unrealistic for anyone to say you can't move or run anymore.

One thing that also works for herniated discs that few people can do, is to just saty in bed for 2 weeks, no work, no meal prepartaion, no nothing. Take voltaren and paracetomal. This is what they did for me the last time I had a major re-hernaition. But I was in hospital. The disc settled down on it's own.