SCIATICA

What is Sciatica?

Sciatica simply means irritation of the sciatic nerve. This often causes symptoms such as lower back pain or buttock pain that radiates down the back of the legs, sometimes all the way to the foot but often just to the hamstring or calf areas. The pain can often be accompanied by pins and needles down the leg, or sometimes even numbness and weakness.

What Causes Sciatica Pain?

Sciatica pain and other symptoms due to something pressing or rubbing on the sciatic nerve. This pressing or rubbing can be related to a specific injury, but sciatica can also develop over a longer time frame without a pre-existing injury. This can often be very confusing and worrying but shouldn’t be a cause for alarm. Things that can cause sciatica include:

Injuries to the discs between the vertebra in our spine

Spinal stenosis – an age related process whereby the part of the spine where nerves pass through becomes narrowed

A build up of muscular tension in the buttock which then irritates the sciatic nerve

A combination of under and over active muscles around the pelvis and hip joint, causing misfiring and imbalances, stressing the structure surrounding the nerve.

Other back injuries

Whatever the cause of your sciatica, there is a lot that can be done to help reduce the irritation on the nerve and reduce your pain levels and other symptoms.

Normally sciatica improves within a 4-6 week time-frame, however it can sometimes be a lot longer than this without treatment.

Sciatica Treatment - What Treatment Do We Offer?

We offer treatment for sciatica pain with a combination of soft tissue release and massage, as well as corrective exercises. This combination not only helps to reduce pain in the short term but also helps to get rid of the problem for good.

Although an important step in working out how to help patients with sciatica is trying to understand what the underlying cause of the sciatica might be. This allows us to target the treatment at the root cause, allowing long term improvement and injury prevention to occur, rather than just masking the symptoms. Therefore, the exact treatment you might experience for your sciatica will differ to someone else’s.

Please call 01942 321235 to book your appointment today.