Inguinal Hernia Treatment

In this post, I will show you what I learned about the treatment of an inguinal hernia from talking to thousands of people suffering from hernias, and through my own trial and error in trying to heal my hernia without surgery.

What Does Google Say is the Best Inguinal Hernia Treatment?

If you type the search “inguinal hernia treatment without surgery” on either google or youtube, you will notice that you will see a bunch of info from either hernia surgeons or medical doctors who all went to school, not to figure out how to cure things by determining the root causes of problems and correcting them holistically, but only how to treat symptoms.

The first result that pops up says “While a hernia cannot heal itself, it can almost always be treated effectively with surgery” The problem is that surgical intervention pays no attention to the root causes of why you ended up with a hernia in the first place, and only applies an invasive fix to alleviate the symptoms. What that means is that once the surgery is over, you will still have all the underlying problems that caused the hernia in the first place. Quite possibly those underlying problems will cause a hernia to form on the opposite side, or cause a reoccurrence of the hernia that you had the surgery on. 

Introduction:

In case you just landed on this from a search and don’t know who I am yet, I’m George Hirst. I ended up getting an inguinal hernia in my late thirties. I didn’t want to take the traditional route and get surgery. Instead, I wanted to see if I could figure out a way to heal it naturally. Through a lot of trial and error, and talking to thousands of other people with inguinal hernias, I was able to determine what the root causes of a hernia are, put a plan in place to fix them, and have been able to become completely symptom-free, and able to go about living my life as if I don’t have a hernia. To learn more about my story please check out my blog posts or check out my videos on my youtube channel. 

What I am about to tell you does not mean that I don’t believe that hernia surgery can be an effective inguinal hernia treatment. For some people, it is the best course of action, but for me personally, it was not what I wanted. Everyone has to weigh their options and make the best decision for their own situation.

Take another look at what the first search result says: “While a hernia cannot heal itself, it can almost always be treated effectively with surgery”.

In a way, this is correct. What I mean is that a hernia will not “heal itself”. If you take no action to fix the root causes of the hernia, and just let it pop out all the time, it will only get bigger and bigger until the only way to treat it will be with surgery.  Depending on which type of inguinal hernia you have – direct or indirect, it could possibly end up in your scrotum. But on the other hand, if you take action to fix the root causes of the hernia it is possible to become completely symptom-free and go about your life as if you don’t have a hernia as I have. 

It takes some work, dedication, and perseverance to be able to accomplish this which is why inguinal hernia treatment without surgery is not right for everyone. If you’re the type of person who has trouble keeping up with a fitness regimen, or a diet, most likely surgery is probably going to be a better option for you. But if you are willing to make some lifestyle changes, and actually put forth some effort with determination, I feel that you will be able to make progress with your hernia. 

The Root Causes of Your Hernia

I want to quickly go over what I found to be the five root causes of a hernia, then I’ll walk you through what I did to fix those five root causes which have allowed me to get to where I am now. As I go through this list, I want you to really think about how many of these you have going on right now. Most likely you will have at least three of the root causes if not all of them. 

1. Weakness in the muscles surrounding the inguinal canal, specifically the transversus abdominis, and the inner and outer obliques
2. Limited mobility and flexibility in the hips
3. Poor pelvic posture (usually Anterior Pelvic Tilt)
4. A diet that causes excess gas, bloating, or constipation
5. Tension caused by repressed emotions such as anger 

Now, I will focus on what I did to fix each of these for inguinal hernia treatment to get rid of my symptoms. 

Muscle weakness: After a lot of research I found an article in a medical journal from way back in 1916 written by an osteopathic doctor who was using these exercises as an inguinal hernia treatment. I started doing these along with an ab vacuum exercise which I altered to incorporate more of the musculature needed to hold in the hernia.

• Inguinal Hernia Treatment Exercises:

  • Leg Pulls
  • Sleeping Bag Squeeze
  • Leg L’s
  • Reverse Swim
  • V-Ups
  • Knee Circle Leg Extensions
  • V-Downs
  • Around the World
  • Straight-Leg Sit-Ups
  • Straight-Leg Side-Ups

Hip Mobility: After talking with thousands of people with inguinal hernias, I realized that there was a trend of tightness and limited mobility in the hips. Upon noticing this trend, I looked at my own hip mobility and flexibility and realized that it was very limited. I realized that when I would try to get into a deep squat position with the correct form I could barely get my butt to drop down below knee level, which was pretty pathetic! I had to work every day at increasing my range of motion and flexibility until eventually, I was able to get into a deep squat position. 

photo courtesy kayathlon.ie

Pelvic Posture: The pelvic posture issue was one of the first things I realized as I was talking to people and trying to find an inguinal hernia treatment without surgery. I believe poor pelvic posture is due to sitting a lot. Whether you consider yourself active or not, most of us do a lot of sitting during the course of the day. All of this sitting leads to all sorts of pelvic postural issues.

For me, and most others with hernias, it is Anterior pelvic tilt. This is when your pelvis is tilted too much toward the front. This causes your ass to stick out in the back, and your stomach to stick out in the front. This usually means you would have shortened hip flexors, tight hamstrings, a tight lower back, and probably some back pain. The good thing is that this was the easiest root cause to fix with one simple exercise.

It is very easy to check to see if you have an anterior pelvic tilt by following the instructions in this video. If you have it, it would be worth your time to correct it, but if not, you’re one step closer to getting rid of that lump without having to get surgery!

Diet: It is imperative that you eliminate any foods that cause excess gas, bloating, or constipation. This is the fastest way to make a positive change in your symptoms. Personally, I had to eliminate dairy and gluten from my diet.

This had a huge effect on how much internal pressure was being exerted and pushing the hernia out. The process that I used to figure out which foods to eliminate, was simple. I stopped eating one specific food for 30 days, then I would eat the food again on the 31st day to see if there were any adverse effects. If there were, I would cut that food out of my diet.

I cannot overstate the impacts of this. Once you find the foods that are causing issues and eliminate them, it will make a huge difference in how much your hernia pokes out, and how much pressure you feel. It could be the smallest thing causing major issues, so it’s a good idea to do a lot of experimentation with this.

Repressed Emotions: Now, for the complicated part. The repressed emotions in the unconscious mind. This is a verycomplicated topic that I would have to write a book about to convey all of the information to you. You might be wondering what this has to do with inguinal hernia treatment.

The main thing that you need to understand is that most likely you have some unresolved feelings of rage, which your unconscious mind does not want you to bring to the surface. So in order to protect you from these feelings coming to the surface where the conscious mind would have to deal with them, your mind creates tension and physical symptoms in the body as a defense mechanism to divert the attention of your conscious mind to a physical ailment in the body. It has to do with Freud’s theory of personality.

This could be back pain, headaches, ulcers, skin disorders, or in our case, a hernia. It is the perfect defense mechanism for your unconscious mind to use to divert your attention. If you’ve ever been nervous before a speech and started sweating or got sick to your stomach, you have felt your unconscious mind using a defense mechanism in an attempt to help protect you from feelings.

The way that I was able to overcome this, was by reading two books. One is “Healing Back Pain – The Mind-Body Connection” written by Dr. Joh Sarno. The other was Called “The Great Pain Deception” written by Steven Ray Ozanich. Immediately after I finished reading these books and had a clear understanding of how this works, I was able to heal myself of debilitating back pain that I suffered from since I was 18 years old, and my hernia symptoms disappeared soon after. This is by far the most complicated and difficult to explain of all of the root causes, but it is well worth taking a look into because it has the potential to have the biggest effect on not only your hernia but on your life in general. 

Conclusion:

So is this a viable inguinal hernia treatment? I believe the answer is yes, but remember, that it’s going to take some experimentation, determination and hard work to do. There is no quick fix. If that’s what you’re looking for, then surgery might be a better option for you. But I am here to tell you that if you get proactive  and put forth some effort toward fixing the five root causes of the hernia that so many of us suffer from, you can make a positive change that will hopefully end up alleviating all of your symptoms.