Posts tagged "sciatica"

Specialized treatments

Specialized treatments

In some locations, physical therapists are specially trained to be involved in other types of treatment, including:

• Vestibular rehabilitation, which helps your inner ear respond to changes in your body position. This is helpful if you have problems with vertigo, or a feeling that you or your surroundings are spinning or tilting when there is actually no movement. Rehabilitation (rehab) can help you get used to the problem so you know when to expect it. And rehab can train your body to know how to react.
• Wound care. Wounds that are very severe or don’t heal well, often because of poor blood flow to the area, can require extensive care. This may include special cleaning and bandaging on a regular and long-term basis. Sometimes hydrotherapy, oxygen treatment, or electrical stimulation is part of the treatment.
• Women’s health. Physical therapists often work with women on exercises to help control urinary incontinence or to relieve pelvic pain.
• Oncology (cancer care), to help if cancer or treatment for cancer causes you to have problems with movement.
• Decongestive lymphatic drainage, which is a special form of massage to help reduce swelling when the lymphatic system is not properly draining fluids from your tissues.

Pain Management and Sciatica

Sciatica is a common type of pain affecting the sciatic nerve, a large nerve extending from the lower back and down the back of each leg.

What Are the Symptoms of Sciatica?

Common symptoms of sciatica include:

• Pain in the rear or leg that is worse when sitting
• Burning or tingling down the leg
• Weakness, numbness, or difficulty moving the leg or foot
• A constant pain on one side of the rear
• A shooting pain that makes it difficult to stand up

Sciatica usually affects only one side of the lower body. Often, the pain extends from the lower back all the way through the back of the thigh and down through the leg. Depending on where the sciatic nerve is affected, the pain may also extend to the foot or toes.

For some people, the pain from sciatica can be severe and debilitating. For others, the pain from sciatica might be infrequent and irritating, but has the potential to get worse.

Seek immediate medical attention with any symptoms of progressive lower extremity weakness and/or loss of bladder or bowel control.

What Causes Sciatica?

Sciatica is caused by irritation of the root(s) of the lower lumbar and lumbosacral spine.

Additional common causes of sciatica include:

• Lumbar spinal stenosis(narrowing of the spinal canal in the lower back)
• Degenerative disc disease (breakdown of discs, which act as cushions between the vertebrae)
• Spondylolisthesis(a condition in which one vertebra slips forward over another one)
• Pregnancy

Other things that may make your back pain worse include being overweight, not exercising regularly, wearing high heels, or sleeping on a mattress that is too soft.

Sciatica Treatment

Sciatica is the longest nerve in the body, originating in the lumbar spinal cord and descending down to the knees and feet. Any kind of irritation in this sciatica nerve can cause pain. The pain starts in the lower back or buttocks and slips down to the knees and ultimately to the feet. Herniation of the discs is another potent cause of sciatica. An x-ray, MRI or a CT scan can further confirm the status of your condition. Interestingly, in most of the cases, some self preventive measures like a little rest and avoiding things that can trigger the pain have proven that it can ease the pain to a great measure.

One of the most readily available sciatica treatments is ice or hot packs, according to ones condition. After 48 hours of the pain, applying any one of them can relieve you of the pain. A bit of stretching exercises can strengthen and relieve pressure from the affected area, but remember not to twist or jerk anything. Regarding the medications to be used, they are categorized into two categories. Generally, the ones which relieve pain and inflammation and secondly, those which only cure the pain. But non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin and ibuprofen are considered comprehensive in the sense that they can perform both these functions. NSAIDs have a lot of side effects like ulcers, bleeding of the stomach and sometimes nausea.

You should take these only after consultation from a doctor. Some stretching exercise and a bit of yoga can do wonders. You can take the help of a qualified physical trainer, if you want to cure your pain through exercise. If any of the above-mentioned methods does not work for you, then you need some serious treatments like steroid injections. Corticosteroids are the injections that are used to relieve the pressure and to get rid of the pain. The last sciatica treatment is surgery. Discectomy and micro-discectomy are some of the preferred surgical methods to remove pain resulting from sciatica.

What is Sciatica?

The term sciatica describes the symptoms of leg pain and possibly tingling, numbness or weakness that travels from the low back through the buttock and down the large sciatic nerve in the back of the leg.

The vast majority of people who experience sciatica get better with time (usually a few weeks or months) and find pain relief with non-surgical sciatica treatment. For others, however, sciatica can be severe and debilitating.

The clinical diagnosis of sciatica is referred to as a “radiculopathy“, which means simply that a disc has protruded from its normal position in the vertebral column and is putting pressure on the radicular nerve (nerve root) in the lower back, which forms part of the sciatic nerve.

An important thing to understand is that sciatica is a symptom of a problem — of something compressing or irritating the nerve roots that comprise the sciatic nerve — rather than a medical diagnosis or medical disorder in and of itself. This is an important distinction because it is the underlying diagnosis (vs. the symptoms of sciatica) that often needs to be treated in order to relieve sciatic nerve pain.

Sciatica occurs most frequently in people between 30 and 50 years of age. Often a particular event or injury does not cause sciatica, but rather it tends to develop as a result of general wear and tear on the structures of the lower spine.

Sciatica treatment

Sciatica nerve pain is caused by a combination of pressure and inflammation on the nerve root, and treatment is centered on relieving both of these factors. Typical sciatica treatment include:

• Non-surgical sciatica treatments, which may include one or a combination of medical treatments and alternative (non-medical) treatments, and almost always includes some form of back exercises and stretching. The goals of non-surgical sciatica treatment like sciatica exercises should include both relief of sciatica pain and prevention of future sciatica symptoms.
• Sciatica surgery, such as microdiscectomy or lumbar laminectomy and discectomy, to remove the portion of the disc that is irritating the nerve root. This surgery is designed to help relieve both the pressure and inflammation and may be warranted if the sciatic nerve pain is severe and has not been relieved with appropriate manual or medical treatments.