The Best Way To Get Rid Of Sciatica?
Determining If It’s Truly Sciatica
Radiating into your leg is NOT a guarantee sciatica. The best way to get rid of radiating is tough because that's going to be 100% dictated by why the pain is happening. Before concluding that sciatica is the prognosis, first look at the entire picture. Often times patients state, "I have radiating into my leg and it's sciatica.” While sciatica could be causing your pain, there are many other reasons you could be experiencing radiating pain into your leg as well.
Alternate Causes of Radiating Pain Into the Leg
You could have an issue in your back which is causing a referred pain into your leg or buttock.
You could experience dysfunction coming from your hip. This is quite commonly the root issue. A glute muscle, or a deeper buttock muscle, is radiating symptoms into your leg and it's not pressure on a nerve whatsoever.
Sciatica
What Is Sciatica?
Sciatica occurs when the sciatic nerve is compressed. The sciatic nerve stems from your lower back and runs through your hips, buttock, and down each leg. With true sciatica, there’s some sort of hang up or irritation on that nerve and the buttock.
It is crucial figure out where the source of the pain is coming from. You can determine the source of the pain through a thorough evaluation with Motus Rx Physical Therapy or someone you trust. While online resources may help (YouTube, Facebook, etc.), they are not tailored to your specific situation. What is it that you are doing that is causing the pain? What would you like to get back to doing without pain? Information on the internet can be helpful, but also potentially lack a deeper explanation of what is going on. Without a specific understanding of why your pain is happening tailored to your situation, the solutions the internet provides may not be as effective. In other words, you may be throwing a dart at a dartboard blindfolded just hoping something works.
When we evaluate someone at Motus Rx Physical Therapy, it's the most critical portion of rehab. We provide an in-depth analysis of your circumstance to provide you with the WHY behind your pain. But, without understanding the why behind what’s happening, it's tough to have a definite answer for anything.
Nerve Flossing For Sciatica
One solution to relieving pain caused by sciatica is by nerve flossing. Nerve flossing consists of mobilizing the irritated sciatic nerve. It helps to get the sciatic nerve going down the leg to tolerating tension. If you think about the sciatic nerve tracking through the hip and through the leg, it is comparable to going through a tunnel. Essentially, the purpose is to kind of slide and glide through the sciatic nerve’s pathway in the leg to get the nerve to move more freely. This relieves pain and makes. the tension less irritable. That is what nerve flossing is.
The most common nerve flossing exercises that Motus Rx Physical Therapy prescribes to relieve sciatica is the Supine Lower Extremity Nerve Tensioner.
For use in reducing nerve irritability with leg symptoms that may or may not be of central origin. Be careful to "toe the line" and not push into or through pain. Use frequently throughout the day but at low intensity.
Sciatica Disguised As Hip Dysfunction
When evaluating sciatica, it is important to ensure that the hip rotators, glutes, and the hip muscles are rock solid. Anytime you have radiating into the leg, it could be possible there the hip and glute muscles are not capable of doing what you're asking them to do. In other words, your hips and glutes are not strong enough. When this occurs, stress is being places somewhere where we wouldn’t normally want it to be. This causes the radiating pain down your leg.
Hip strength variation exercises can be effective for starting to relieve your radiating pain. Core strength variations are also a beneficial aspect to work on. Building your hip and core strength takes pressure off the sciatic nerve.
When all else fails, figure out what triggers the leg pain you are experiencing and do the complete opposite. There's a method that we use fairly commonly at Motus Rx Physical Therapy. It's a matter of understanding that your body doesn't necessarily care which direction the body goes as long as it's not the position that causes pain, guarding, or anxiety.
For example, if you have leg pain that becomes more intense when you bend forward, or when you are sitting these are common sciatica symptoms. But again, this does not mean that you should automatically jump to, “I have sciatica.” Your symptoms may potentially go away if you work more extension-based exercises to build strength in your hips, glutes, and core.
These exercises include backward bending, standing, walking, prone presses, upward dog, cobra, or propping up on your elbows. Getting into an extended position can potentially take the symptoms out of the leg and relieve pressure. So, if bending forward increases pain going down the leg and doing extension-based things decreases pain going down the leg, you're probably headed in the right direction.
Take advantage of positive movement and run with it as long as you can. Eventually, you should get to a point where you're barely feeling symptoms in the leg anymore. Once that happens, then you should start to go back and retrain and reintroduce movements that started your pain. Be sure you are gradually reintroducing these exercises to avoid injury.
What To Do About Sciatica
You have to figure out WHY the the pain you are experiencing is happening in the first place. There's no guarantee that just because you have symptoms going down your leg it's sciatica. Whatever thing, position or activity triggers your pain the most - do the polar opposite and see if your symptoms get better.
If you have a hard time standing upright, standing or walking for 10-20 minutes without you leg going numb, or without pain radiating down your legs you should work on flexion, sitting, and pulling your knees to your chest. Many times, this is why you see people in the grocery store leaning on their carts. They have a hard time staying upright walking up and down the grocery aisles. It feels better for them to get in that flexed position to try and relieve some stress.
Once you have done the polar opposite of what has caused your pain and it has reduced your discomfort, you will want to reintroduce the movement that you struggled with at the beginning. This should be done in a gradual measure to ensure you do not invoke pain.
In conclusion, figure out why the radiating is happening (because it's not a guarantee that it's sciatica). The first priority is figuring out what is going on. If you don't have the luxury of that, or you've been down that road and nobody's talked to you about the method of doing the polar opposite movement of what aggravates you to try to take the symptoms out of the leg, I certainly would recommend going that route.
But REMEMBER, this does not replace a medical diagnosis or medical advice. If you have any questions, reach out to us for your specific situation.
You May Also Be Interested in:
Dr. Eric Wallace’s Podcasts:
1. “Why Hip Flexors Are Tight?”
2. “The Simple Thing To Prevent Pain With Workouts/Sport”
3. “Understanding Your Pain Differently”
Dr. Eric Wallace’s Books, Guides, And Words Of Wisdom:
1. “7 secrets to Relieve low back pain”
2. “9 ways to Bullet Proof Your Body for any workout”
3. “3 keys to easing pain while we wait for normal”
*UPDATED ON 3/1/22 FOR RELEVANCY PURPOSES*