Sciatica
Sciatica: What’s Causing Your Pain?
Pain travelling from your lower back or buttock, down your leg and sometimes all the way to your foot?
You may have heard it called sciatica.
Sciatica can cause sharp or shooting pain, burning, tingling, numbness or even weakness in the leg. It can be extremely uncomfortable and, at times, quite frightening. The good news is that most people improve without surgery and can get back to their normal activities. However, there's an important thing to understand:
Sciatica isn't a single condition with a single cause.
That’s why the treatment that helped your friend, neighbour or family member may not necessarily be the treatment that’s right for you.
The first step is understanding what is causing your symptoms.
What is Sciatica?
The sciatic nerve is a large nerve that travels from the lower back, through the buttock and down the leg.
The term sciatica is commonly used to describe pain and other symptoms that follow this pathway when a nerve is irritated.
Symptoms can include:
Sharp, shooting or electric-like pain
Aching or burning pain
Pins and needles or tingling
Numbness
Weakness in the leg or foot
Pain travelling from the lower back or buttock into the leg
You may have quite a lot of leg pain with relatively little back pain.
What Actually Causes Sciatica?
This is where things get interesting.
Not everyone's sciatica is caused by the same thing.
One common cause is irritation of a nerve root in the lower back. For example, a disc can bulge or herniate and irritate a nearby nerve. Changes in the joints and other structures around the spine can also reduce the space available for a nerve and contribute to symptoms.
However, there can be other contributors too. Your symptoms may be influenced by how your spine, hips and surrounding muscles are moving and loading. In some people, structures around the buttock, including the piriformis muscle, may also contribute to sciatic-type symptoms.
There are also some less common but more severe causes of sciatica, the Chiropractors and Physiotherapists at Thornlie Health are trained in how to assess for these rarer causes and what to do next if it looks like your symptoms could be the result of one of these causes.
When Should You Get Your Sciatica Assessed?
You don't have to wait until your pain becomes unbearable.
Consider getting assessed if your symptoms:
Are affecting your work, sleep, exercise or everyday life
Keep coming back
Are getting worse
Include significant numbness or weakness
Are leaving you unsure about what you should or shouldn't be doing
A good assessment should go beyond simply saying "You've got sciatica." It should help answer:
What are the potential causes of your sciatica?
What treatment can help you to settle it down?
What can you safely keep doing?
What can we do to reduce the chance of it coming back?
That's where working with an experienced Chiropractor or Physiotherapist here at Thornlie Health can be valuable.
The Bottom Line
Sciatica is a symptom, not a one-size-fits-all diagnosis.
There are different reasons why the nerves involved can become irritated, which means there isn't one magic exercise, stretch, massage or adjustment that will fix every case.
The good news is that many people with sciatica improve with appropriate conservative care and a gradual return to normal activity.
The key is finding out what's contributing to your particular symptoms.
At Thornlie Health, our Chiropractors and Physiotherapists can assess your sciatica, help identify the factors that may be contributing to your pain, and work with you to develop an individualised plan to get it better AND reduce the chance of it coming back.
If sciatica is impacting your life, click ‘Call For An Appointment’ or ‘Book Online’ above to book an assessment with a member of our team. Let's work out what's causing your symptoms and what can be done to help get rid of them.
