Did you know that..
The largest nerve in the body is the sciatic nerve!!
It starts in the low back from five different levels, or nerve roots, of the spinal cord and ends at the big toe. Depending on the location and amount of pressure on the nerve the pain can be just in the low back, just in the butt, just in the leg, just in the calf area, and even just in the foot or big toe, or in a few or all of these areas at the same time.
The sciatica leg pain is often worse than the back pain, even though both are caused by the nerve being pinched, compressed, stretched or irritated anywhere from the disc, nerve root, down the sacroiliac joint and thru the Piriformis muscle.
The symptoms of sciatica include:
Hot pain in the buttock.
Aching in the buttock, back of the thigh (hamstring) and calf.
Pain in the ankle and foot.
Pins and needles.
Increased pain when lifting, straining or coughing.
Loss of power to the muscles of the leg and foot.
Sciatica facts
Sciatica is nerve pain from irritation of the sciatic nerve.
The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in the body.
Sciatica pain is typically felt from the low back to behind the thigh and radiating down below the knee.
Sciatica can also result from damage between the nerve and the discs between the vertebra that make up your spine. These soft, pulpy discs can bulge, herniated or rupture if or put too much pressure on the nerve. The nerve can be pinched on bone, soft tissue, muscle scar tissue, blood vessels and contamination of tissue. This puts stress on nearby nerves, resulting in swelling, inflammation and pain. Once a disc has swollen, or is altered, pain symptoms of sciatica can appear on small actions, like coughing, sneezing or twisting. Pain usually worsens with long periods of sitting or standing, or with extended bed rest. But many other things make Sciatica last longer.
Sciatica Care can help
We can assess to see if we can help. Their is a wide diversity of treatment protocols that do not involve drugs and surgery, and slight variation if you have had back surgery. Health care call these Manual Care.
When can we know how to alleviate this
RICE helps, rest, Ice Compress, Elevate above heart,
Manual Care helps in grade 0,1,2 of sciatica, not much in grade 3 and rare in grade 4 & 5 Sciatica. 0-2 you can still work but suffer differing degrees of pain and misery. I had Grade 2 Sciatica in 2000, it lasted two years and cost me $5,000 to alleviate with chiro, medics, physio, podiatry, massage and remedies, the first year I had six nights sleep
And now the politics, yep it creeps into sciatica.
The remainder of this topic has been deleted by order as of 29 Sept 2015 of AHPRA (Federal Regulators) we cannot tell you the benefits of Treatment for Sciatica of adjustments because their Bronfort Report (from England) tells them their is not a sufficient evidentiary basis in scholarly research (in USA/UK) by costly (~$3M) double blind studies approved by their standards to tell you this. Their are plentiful case studies though but these cost a fraction to do (10k). However The Court of Appeals in NSW has found that studies that deny care to a patient and the patient deteriorates by not getting care, this is the grounds for negligence and misconduct even in so called research, so it is unlawful in NSW to exclude care even by agreed contract. And likewise doing a trial excluding care for children is criminal negligence their. So what we measure by is illegal in NSW and non-existent in Australia, but we must adhere to it as it makes ‘good health policy’. And now we are hamstrung from disproving it because of this, love health politics! Under the govt health processes 2000-2010 and onward Sciatica is on the rise. In the 80’s and before it was reducing heavily. In 2014 0.2-0.6 of all sciatica’s were seen by chiropractors in the workers compensation summary. In 1968 4/10 were seen by chiropractors with a high level of success (Nobel Peace Prize MAcFarlane Burnett National Health Review towards Medicare recommending medicare cover chiropractic as well [3xweek for 12 weeks])
So we can help, or at least give it a go; we just cant tell you our opinion why it works. But until the govt changes, we are all in a quandary of what to do, so you are surfing the web getting ideas while blindly punching your bum to shut it up as you lean precariously away from the next bolt of lightning down your leg. Sciatica bite me.
