Sciatica Is No Joke!
Many have suffered from minor aches and pains throughout their lifetime. However, sciatic pain is one of the worst! Understanding your options for sciatica treatment can help you take the next step in your health journey.
Common Types of Sciatica
- Biomechanical
- Discogenic
Biomechanical
The pain is still a shooting pain that goes down the back of the leg; however, this type of sciatica is by far the easier of the two to help!
In this case, the pelvis usually shifts after moving or bending a certain way, followed by a pulling feeling. There was no immediate sharp pain that took you to your knees, but stiffness slowly started to creep in and now causes shooting pain when moving, bending, twisting, or turning.
Discogenic
This type of pain is usually associated with a traumatic event.
Some of the traumatic events could be a collision from a sport like football, soccer, or baseball. Car accidents, slips up or down steps, falls, and other similar traumas can cause a sudden, unexpected motion to the body. When the spinal disc experiences motion while the vertebrae and disc are already in a stressed position, the potential for a disc to herniate increases significantly!
This can cause a sharp and shooting pain to run down the leg. When this occurs, it can make standing next to impossible.
Treatment and Care Options
- Medical
- Nutrition
- Chiropractic
Medical Treatment
Medical treatment focuses more on how to alleviate the pain and swelling. This is a great first step, but if all you do is treat the symptoms, the pain will very likely come back again. This is seen when patients have a flare-up of sciatic pain, which often occurs repeatedly throughout one’s lifetime.
Palliative care (the relieving of pain) is a great thing, but we cannot stop with the relief of pain!
Common methods to visualize the degree of the disc herniation are:
- X-ray: to visualize the loss of disc space. Both chiropractors and medical doctors can easily take or order spinal X-rays.
- MRI: to visualize the soft tissue impact of the disc on the nerve.
- CT: to better visualize the soft tissue impact of the disc on the nerve with a contrast dye if the MRI does not show enough detail.
Generally, the X-ray will be the first step, followed by an MRI. This is considered the Gold Standard in the medical field.
Radiopaedia.org | Disc Herniation
After treating the pain and reducing the swelling, strengthening the body is needed to help reduce the potential for future flare-ups. Stretching, physical therapy, and returning to gentle exercise (while listening to the body for signs of potential flare-ups) are good steps to help prevent further damage and degeneration to the herniated disc.
Nutrition Treatment
Nutrition is the key to health regardless of whatever treatment option you choose! You cannot build a healthy cell, tissue, or organ out of an empty warehouse. What I am saying is that if your body doesn’t get the proper building blocks, then the materials used to build your cells are poor. Having nutrition that is from a food source is almost always superior to a synthetic source. The body recognizes synthetic versions as foreign and has more challenges using it efficiently.
Just like a stone wall is much sturdier than a stick fence, so too will a spinal disc made up of proper building blocks. Discs from good proteins, fats, and carbohydrates will outperform ones made up from refined sugars and fried foods.
This doesn’t mean you can’t eat tasty things. Eat highly refined foods in moderation so inflammatory markers stay low and disc herniation flare-ups can be minimized!
(More information in depth on Nutrition in future articles.)
Chiropractic Care for Sciatica
Chiropractic care is (in my opinion) the most effective at restoring the proper biomechanics to the body to help it heal from the inside out. The goal of Chiropractic is to provide neurological input that will positively impact your healing journey.
While the pain is active and flared up, you can still be helped with conservative Chiropractic adjustments. The First goal is to reduce inflammation, with medications (as prescribed by an MD or DO), ice over the inflamed area as directed by a medical provider (never directly on the skin to avoid damage to the body), or taking supplements that reduce inflammation in the body. Two good ones are turmeric and ginger.
The Chiropractic adjustment corrects the improperly positioned vertebrae, often called a subluxation. This subluxation puts pressure on the disc, which will start to cause the disc to age faster from a lack of imbibition. That is when the disc cannot properly move fluid and nutrients in and out of the disc like a pumping mechanism.
ALWAYS check with your medical provider before adding supplements, changing any prescriptions, or adding new therapies. The goal of any treatment option is to help your body heal and not cause further damage.
Action Steps
If you are tired of being in pain and ready to make a change, contact us at Topsail Chiropractic! We want to walk alongside you on your health journey so that you can do more than just get through the day.
You deserve to thrive and live life to the fullest.
After we get the spine moving, we need to get the muscles around the low back stronger! Simple exercises can be recommended when your body is ready. If you need more personalized help, personal trainers and physical therapy can guide you in that portion of your healing journey.
Are you ready to Set Sail to Better Health?
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