joe_3z

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 Gabrielle and John –

Thanks for the link Gabrielle, I already do leg lifts very similar but I will give this a try and see if they may help.

Do you have any idea what the Chinese herbal medicine is? I hope it isn’t one that requires killing of endangered species… but I’m impressed that it seems to be helpful. That’s a lot of pills! What’s the cost?

I sure hope they don’t affect endangered species! I think these are actually produced in the USA (“Distributed by Activeherb technology, San Diego”) but are based on (ancient?) Chinese recipes. The ingredients are just the scientific names of the plants but I have no idea what they all are; for example “Rhizoma Atractylodis Macrocephalae (Bai Zhu)” – there are 10 ingredients like that. The bottle cost $16 at my local Chinese tea shop and comes with 200 pills, at the rate I take them the first bottle lasted a month, and the 2nd bottle a little longer since I stopped taking them for a while. It’s hard to say if they actually might be beneficial long term but they at least seem to affect the symptoms and tighten things up while they’re working.
It’s odd how some days things seem better and other days worse. At least I’m back to exercising the abs again!
Thanks for your encouragement and best to you all,
Joe

PS – John I would definitely avoid the Wheel pose based on what I read; I found the page as I had it bookmarked here: http://healinghernia.com/therapy/yoga/

“some specific asanas are cautioned against until your hernia has healed. In particular, extreme abdominal stretches may be problematic for a hernia patient. For example, in the Sun Salutation sequences (A & B), step 5, called Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward facing dog), is generally cautioned against for this reason. [There is more information on problematic asanas below.]”

(Note that they identify with green highlight the recommended poses from the sequence)

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

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

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