Sciatica

Sciatic Nerve

Your sciatic nerve is your longest and largest nerve. It is made up of five roots that leave your low back, join in your pelvis and then travel to the muscles and joints of your thigh, knee, calf, ankle, foot and toes.

What is Sciatica?

If your sciatic nerve becomes inflamed the condition is called sciatica (pronounced si' ad-a'ka).  The pain can be intense!  It often follows the path of your nerve - down the back of the legs and thighs, ankle, foot and toes - but it can also radiate to your back!  Along with burning, sharp pains, you may also feel nerve sensations such as pins and needles, tingling, prickling, crawling sensations or tenderness.  Ironically, your leg may also feel numb!

To complicate matters, although sciatica pain is usually in the back of the legs or thighs, in some people it can be in the front or side of the legs or even in the hips.  For some, the pain is in both legs: bilateral sciatica.

The Chiropractic Approach

Chiropractors correct the vertebral subluxation complex, which causes poor spinal alignment and nerve pressure. Doing this, chiropractors relieve stress on the spinal nerves, joints, and discs. Just as you get your car's alignment checked and corrected, so you should periodically get your spine's alignment checked out and corrected. Is chiropractic spinal care a treatment for sciatica? No, it is a procedure for the analysis and correction of spinal nerve stress. And yet, if you do have sciatica, a chiropractic spinal adjustment is very badly needed. Every sciatica sufferer needs a healthy spine.

Cause of Sciatica

Like most other conditions, sciatica has a wide variety of causes but an unhealthy spine with a protrude or ruptured disc can irritate the sciatic nerve causing sciatica. Sciatica has been reported following accidents, injuries and even childbirth, usually due to spinal misalignment. However, advanced diabetes can also cause sciatic nerve irritation, as can arthritis, constipation, tumors and even vitamin deficiencies.

Research

Research shows that the relationship between chiropractic spinal adjustment and sciatica and leg pain is a close one. For example, one study of sixty patients showed that spinal care should be the care of choice for sciatica suffers. And still other studies praised chiropractic spinal adjustments for sufferers of sciatica and leg pain. In one controlled study four different approaches (spinal care traction, two types of injections) were used to deal with low back pain and sciatica suffers. The group that had spinal care experienced the greatest degrees of recovery. Interestingly, a large number in the traction group eventually required surgery.

Conclusion

Those suffering from sciatica and leg pains would do well to visit a doctor of chiropractic. To millions of sciatica sufferers chiropractic's unique approach to wellness has been a blessing. If the spine becomes misaligned or distorted it could damage (impinge) the nerves it is designed to protect. The impinged nerves can upset the delicate workings of the nervous system, weaken the body and set the stage for disease, pain and body malfunction.

Throughout your life, you have your teeth, blood pressure and eyes checked - how about your spine?