Have you ever experienced a sharp pain or numbness in your right buttock but didn’t know the source of that pain? If you did, you might have experienced a condition called sciatica.
The source of sciatic pain is the sciatic nerve that runs down the middle of your spine. When the nerve reaches your lower back, it branches off into two nerves, one running down each buttock’ into your legs and down into your feet. Typically, you would only experience sciatica on the right side and usually no further down than your thighs. However, people who have severe sciatica can experience intense pain all the way down to their feet and on both sides.
As far as what causes sciatica, there are several ways one can come by this condition. For your edification, here are the most common causes of sciatica:
- herniated disc anywhere along the spinal column
- Bone spur connected to the spine
- Narrowing of the spine (spinal stenosis), which pinches the nerve
If you are not sure about the source of the numbness or pain in your buttocks or lower back, here are some symptoms for which you can look.
If your sciatica is mild, you might only experience a little numbness in your lower back or buttocks. In the most severe cases, the pain your might feel could be like an electrical shock. If the pain radiates into your buttocks, thigh, and calf, it can literally cause you to temporarily lose control of your bowel, bladder, and leg into which the pain is radiating. Also, it is unusual to feel sciatic pain in both legs, but it does happen in severe cases.
After knowing what you should be looking for, you should no longer have issues distinguishing sciatic pain from other sources of pain. The symptoms are unmistakable.
If you conclude you do have an issue with sciatica, it is something you need to address sooner rather than later. Whatever is causing your sciatica is likely to worsen over time, which will cause sciatica to get worse. With that said, we will use the next section to discuss possible remedies.
Remedies for Sciatica
In the case of sciatica, we want to start at the bad end of the remedy scale. That would be surgery. If the cause of your sciatica were to be a herniated or ruptured disc, you needing surgery would be almost certain. In fact, it would be the intensity of your sciatica that might prompt your doctor to decide surgery is the only remedy.
Surgery would also be the right call if you injured your spine or had a significant bone spur infringing on your spinal cord. Absent any of these more progressive issues, back surgery is something you want to avoid. The risks are high. That’s why less invasive treatment options like physical therapy or chiropractic care would be far better options.
If you decide to try physical therapy first, you can bank on the therapist wanting to direct you to strengthen your back and legs. It is possible to strengthen certain muscles in the back to enable the back to keep a better hold on your skeletal system. If your spine is more stable, it is possible sciatica will go away. The problem with physical therapy is it doesn’t always address the actual cause of sciatica. That would be especially true if the source of your sciatica would be a herniated disc or bone spur.
Prior to any thought about surgery, you might want to give chiropractic care a shot. In our clinic, we work with a lot of patients who come to us complaining about sciatica. After getting the images we would need, we can identify the source of your sciatic. From there, we can start a series of manual bone adjustments that will provide relief from your sciatica symptoms. As a word of caution, it might take a series of adjustments over a few weeks or months before you get the relief you want/need. If we cant help resolve the issue, surgery might be your only remaining option.
Based on this information, you should be able to determine whether or not you have sciatica. If you do, it is something with which we might be able to help. We would know more if you came in for images and a proper assessment. If you would like more information or to make an appointment, you can give us a call here at the clinic at 205-637-1363.
