Jean K. is an incredible flexible yoga teacher in NY. She is now 42, looks, 28 and had a spinal fusion when she was in her early 20s. After the fusion she discovered yoga and now thinks that the operation may have been unnecessary.

There are different types of spinal fusion where the surgeon peels away your back muscles and sets titanium screws into your back to hold metal rods in place. It is really only necessary when the vertebral bones have been dislocated or damaged and now endanger the spinal cord or nerves exiting the spine.

There is a much darker reason some people get spinal fusions. If someone has been in an accident at work and go to a lawyer, he may in turn refer the patient to a neurologist that will take an EMG, an electromyograph, which records the electrical activity of the muscles around the spine.

The diagnosis from the EMG is usually severe disk disease. Now the accident victim’s back really hurts! To get a diagnosis like that validates the real pain felt and makes it feel worse. If they decide on an operation, they may not have to, or be able to go back to work.

Remember too, that the fee for discectomy, cutting away a bulging disk, is $5,000 – $7,000. A spinal fusion earns the surgeon $20,000 – $30,000. The incentives are wrong for the surgeon.