Posts tagged "treatment"

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.

Lower Back Pain Treatment

Low back pain surely occurs to a person at least once in his/her lifetime and can turn in to a deadly disease, making the person disabled. In fact, back pain is the number one disability for those under 45 years of age. But, the good news is that low back pain is treatable and sometimes preventable too. A variety of treatment options are available for relieving low back pain. Each treatment has its own way of treating the patient but all the treatment options have the same aim of reducing or stopping the irritable and disturbing pain.

One of the common and easy treatments for low back pain include active treatments. The success of these treatments depends upon the patient himself, as he is required to undertake these treatments on his own. Some of the active treatments for low back pain include:

Exercise: Some active forms of back pain exercises are necessary for alleviating back pain. In fact regular back pain exercise routine helps in avoiding recurrences of low back pain and also reduces the severity and duration of the possible future episodes of low back pain. Back pain exercise program should include a combination of stretching exercises like hamstring exercises, strengthening exercises like dynamic lumbar stabilization exercise and McKenzie exercise, and low impact aerobics like walking, bicycling, or swimming.

Quit Smoking: Smoking can lead to low back pain as it damages the vascular structures of the discs and joints in the back. Quiting smoking would improve blood circulation and healing. Also, nicotine results in inhibiting bone growth by undermining the fusion process after the spine fusion surgery. So, patients of spine surgery should quit smoking for allowing the bone to heal.

Weight loss: Losing your weight will surely help in reducing low back pain by lessening the amount of stress on the low back muscles and ligaments. Patients carrying more weight around their midsection pose greater risk for obesity-related health problems like low back pain. Due to pressure of extra weight on your back, your disc and other spinal structures can get damaged.

Ergonomics: Ergonomics is the study of the workplace as it relates to the worker. Ergonomic furniture, proper lifting techniques, supportive footwear and avoiding static posture for prolonged periods of time would surely help in reducing pressure on the low back.

So, these are some of the active treatments for low back pain which when applied in daily life can shoo away your back pain.

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.