What’s the story with sciatica? Cause, treatment & prevention.
Dancing. Squatting. Kicking a soccer ball.
These things are possible thanks to your sciatic nerves, two large, pinky-finger-sized nerves that branch out from the lower lumbar spine, down each leg and to the soles of your feet. They tell your limbs how to move and send your brain feedback if something’s amiss.
However, 40% of people will experience sciatic nerve pain, or sciatica, at some point in their life – and it’s no walk in the park.
What does sciatica feel like?
Sciatica can feel like electric shocks, a dull ache, weakness or tingling that travels from the lower back and hips through the buttock and down the leg – usually on one side. This distinctive pain follows the nerve’s pathway and can be pretty scary if it strikes you out of the blue one morning as you hop out of bed.
What causes sciatica?
Sciatica isn’t a disease in itself, but a symptom of spinal nerve interference. Perhaps there’s an injury to one of your spinal discs (such as a herniation), a bone spur, or a narrowing of the spinal canal (known as stenosis). There could be a degenerative process at work affecting the “cushioning” between vertebrae, or maybe you’re just heavily pregnant – which puts a lot of extra pressure on the spine. All these states can irritate, pinch or compress the sciatic nerve which causes that “There’s a lightning bolt shooting down my thigh!” sensation.
What can you do about sciatic pain?
Once you’re sure that sciatica is the culprit, you may be offered options ranging from rest to steroid injections to surgery. For some, sciatic pain resolves spontaneously in days or weeks. For others, it’s a recurring issue that makes everyday activities challenging indeed.
Rather than risky interventions or band-aid fixes (the jury is still out on the effectiveness of surgery or cortisone shots), here at Spinecare we love empowering people with knowledge about the root cause of sciatica while providing safe, minimally-invasive techniques that call on the body’s innate healing potential.
Gentle chiropractic adjustments help realign the spine and relieve pressure and compression, freeing up space for the nerve, restoring mobility and reducing inflammation. In conjunction with diet and lifestyle changes, strengthening exercises and minimising underlying risk factors (see below), the pain of sciatica can abate while your general health improves at the same time. This is holistic care.
Is it possible to prevent sciatica?
Sciatica risk factors include age, obesity, diabetes and occupation (if your work involves a lot of heavy-lifting and twisting, or spending long hours in a chair).
To this list we would add nutrition, hydration and stress levels, because what you eat, drink and think can have enormous consequences for the health of your spine. (We’ve written extensively about simple, effective habits you can adopt to support your spine, from eating more colourful veggies to optimizing your workstation – so be sure to have a scroll through the Spinecare archives.)
While there’s not much you can do about the passage of time, there are so many opportunities to address sciatica’s other risk factors and help prevent it in the future. You could take up walking each day, decide to quit smoking, enlist a personal trainer, embrace gelatinous and joint-nourishing bone broth, reimagine your career (or simply chat to your boss about better ergonomics), and see a chiropractor for regular adjustments to keep your spine and nervous system in tip top shape.