Sciatica: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatments

By Anthony Galante

Just say the word "sciatica" and people cringe. If you have never suffered from it, consider yourself lucky. If you have had it or still do have it, you already know this condition can literally buckle your knees. This condition is actually the result of other medical issues, and not a "condition" that just develops on its own.
Causes
The sciatic never begins in the lower back and then continues down the back of each leg. This nerve generates some of the sensations you feel on the bottom of the foot, lower leg, and rear of the thigh. It also controls the muscles located in the lower leg and knee areas. Some conditions that can cause pain in this nerve are:

• Pelvic fracture or injury
• Tumors
• Slipped and/or herniated disks
• Spinal stenosis

Common Symptoms and Effects
There are different levels of pain, from mild annoyance to completely debilitating. It usually starts as a throbbing pain and continues as a constant ache. Over time, it can cause numbness or burning sensations in the affected areas.
The smallest of movements (and actually lack of movement) can cause the pain level to heighten. For instance, lying on your belly sleeping all night, long periods of standing or sitting, and even something as simple as sneezing can cause excessive pain.
Treatments
To be sure you have sciatica, it is best to visit your general practitioner full a full diagnosis. In most cases, your doctor will recommend a specialist for further testing. Once diagnosed, the specialist will probably recommend some focused exercises and stretching, the use of ice and/or heat to the affected area, and physical therapy.
In addition to these standard treatments, doctors will often recommend additional treatments, such as chiropractic care and/or medical injections. Because everyone is different and their bodies react differently to these treatments, every case is unique and will be treated as such.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Sciatica:-Causes,-Symptoms,-and-Treatments&id=8937431

Top 7 Natural Remedies to Fight Sciatica

By Sudesh Abrol

Sciatica pain travels along the sciatic nerve, which descends from back of the pelvic to the back of the hip, thigh, and goes down the legs and touches the foot sometimes. When it happens, it is severe pain, most of the time, unbearable and the patient has to stay in the bed for couple of days. This pain may be the reason of injury by accident, a fall, injury of the nerve, or due to inflammation in the nerve and the area around. This may also happen due to overweight creating pressure on the sciatic nerve. Pregnant women and diabetic persons often get this pain along the sciatic nerve. Lifting heavy weight or falling at slippery place, is the common cause of sciatica pain. Different people explain different experiences.
Some cannot sit long hours, whereas some cannot walk properly. Some complain after sitting long when they stand, their hip locks, and it takes quite a few seconds to loosen up. They take a few slow steps, which are painful, but after that, they are normal. Others feel great discomfort while sleeping, but all sciatica patients suffer terribly from this crucial pain. In the beginning of sciatica pain, one feels like having lower back pain, but when it travels into hip and thigh, then the doctors diagnose as sciatica. Sometimes, doctors cannot figure out for six to eight months. They speculate it may be rupture of the ligaments connected to the two lowest vertebrae. Doctors also say this may be a displaced disk of the vertebrae. The patient suffers from shooting or pinching pain and after couple of days, the pain subsides, but it does not go away. It comes back off and on and sometimes it is so severe, the patient has to stay in hospital.

· Drink 40 oz. (5 cups) of water early morning sitting on a chair and eat no food for an hour. This helps lubricate and hydrate the stiff joints. This also helps detoxify body and keep colon clean
· Swallow half a teaspoon of fresh turmeric paste with water before half an hour eating breakfast
· Drink a glass of lassi (butter milk) mixed with a quarter teaspoon of hing (Asafetida) powder
· Drink ginger tea twice a day to help soothe the pain. Being antioxidant, it also helps relieve gas and toxins in the body

· Consume half a teaspoon of Giloye (Garhuchi) powder and half a teaspoon of Amlika powder with water in the morning and before bedtime
· Use firm mattress or flatbed. You may sleep on floor for a week and see if this helps you to sleep well and sometimes, it reduces the pain.
· Mix one tablespoon of ghee with a teaspoon of ginger powder and massage gently on the sore area for 3 minutes before going to bed
Remember, when we stick to alkaline food, many physical and mental problems may disappear. Regular exercise, especially with weights, 15 minutes four days a week, is important for the body to stay energized. Breathing exercises, yoga's slow postures, and meditation also help to calm down the pain.

Sciatica pain does not kill someone, but the shooting pain becomes intolerable many times. It is a pain resulting from the irritation of Sciatica nerve and also known as a 'pinched nerve'. With top seven natural remedies, yoga's slow postures, breathing exercise, and meditation help one to ease the pain, otherwise this excruciating pain makes sitting and standing impossible sometimes. I suffered with this pain over 30 years; no doctor could fix me, so I helped myself with natural remedies, exercises, and natural therapies and finally enjoying a disease-free- body.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Top-7-Natural-Remedies-to-Fight-Sciatica&id=9002198

The 6 Medical Conditions that can Cause Sciatica

By James William Van Heerden

This article is not a scientific account of sciatica, but my very personal experience of it, how it affected me and what I tried to do to recover or at least get some improvement. I tried to pass on some of the more general information about sciatica that I discovered on the internet and how it helped or did not help me on the road of recovery.
I discovered that there are a number of reasons why you "get" sciatica or sciatic lower back pain. For myself, I can only give a guesstimate of what the reason is why I got sciatica as I did not go for a MRI or CT scan (because of financial constraints). My MD explained to me that sciatica is not a disease, but only describes a certain kind of pain. Apparently this pain is caused by any kind of pressure on the large sciatic nerve that exits through an opening in the spine in the lumbar region and travels down through the buttocks and then to the back of the leg, thus "transferring" the pain to these areas.
I just want to add that since that fateful day that I was diagnosed with sciatica back pain, I made an in-depth study of this affliction to get as most information about it to see what I can do to get a cure. Now I do not say that I know everything about sciatica, but I am confident that I do know much, much more about it and the way it affects a person. As far as a cure is concerned, as I mentioned earlier, this is something that one has to try different treatments or combination of treatments to find out what is the best for you.

I was diagnosed with sciatica about a year ago in February 2014 after experiencing the classic sciatic lower back, buttock and leg pain and in this article I will chat about the source of sciatica, what may be the cause and finally how to get rid or completely cure it.
To start off, I want to give you a picture of what sciatica is, how you get it, how it affects a person and the different types of treatments that you can experiment with. There are drugs, exercises, stretching exercises, creams and even a psychological approach to the problem.
How do You Get Sciatica. Part 1
Primarily, there is no single cure for sciatica and every person will have his/her own set of treatments for the problem. This suggests that a certain number of trials and errors must be done before one can find a balanced and individualized treatment plan that will be based on the symptoms, diagnosis and reaction to the various treatments.
· Characteristics of Sciatica.
o You will have a continuous pain from the pinched area in your back, running through the buttocks down to the leg, sometimes even reaching your foot. Very rarely this can affect both legs.
o This pain in the leg will make it very difficult to stand.
o Lying down or sitting can make it worse.
o You will find a weakness or numbness of the leg and it will be difficult to move.
o The pain can be described as a very sharp, stinging pain that can at times become unbearable.
The 6 Types of Medical Conditions that can Cause Sciatica.
There are basically six different reasons of what can cause sciatic back pain:
1. Lumbar Herniated Disk.
2. Degenerative Disk Disease.
3. Isthmic spondylolisthesis.
4. Lumbar Spinal Stenosis.
5. Piriformis Syndrome.
6. Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction.
I will try to explain what these important sounding terms means:-
1. Lumbar Herniated Disk.
A lumbar disk consists of an outer portion which contains a soft inner portion. When the fibrous outer portion ruptures, the softer inner portion leaks out into the spinal canal putting pressure on the spinal nerve. This will cause pain to travel down the nerve into the buttocks and down the leg.
Symptoms of a Lumbar Herniated Disc

• Basically sciatica usually starts with a severe pain in the lower back, buttocks and the leg.
• This pain can be followed by numbness or tingling and weakness in the leg, making it difficult to walk and dragging the foot.
• The leg pain may in some cases even be more severe that the back pain
• Sometimes this can also affect the bowel and bladder functions, at which point you are urged to consult a physician because it can point to a very serious medical condition.

L4-L5 and L5-S1 Disc Herniation Symptoms.
Most of these conditions will occur in the bottom lower part of the spine, affecting the L4-L5 or L5-S1 levels. Classic sciatica symptoms will be present and can lead to the following:

• L5 nerve impingement at the L4-L5 level. This can also bring a weakness in the ankle and big toe, but the numbness will be felt on top of the foot with the pain extending to the buttocks...
• S1 nerve impingement at the L5-S1 levels. Causes weakness or loss of the ankle reflex and /or a weakness in lifting up the big toe (toe rises). The patient can also experience pain down the sole or outside of the foot.

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-6-Medical-Conditions-that-can-Cause-Sciatica&id=9003149

Energy Meridians and Emotions

By Rivka Levy

Energy meridians were first mapped in the human body around 3,500 years' ago by Chinese physicians, who understood that some sort of subtle energy (what we would call the soul) was animating the body.
When the energy was flowing around the body correctly, the person stayed healthy. When the energy was stuck, stagnant, weak or blocked in some way, the person would get sick.
These early practitioners of Chinese medicine mapped the energy flow around the body, and identified 14 main energy 'pathways', which they called meridians. Each meridian was named for the main organ, or physical system, it governed or regulated in the body.
They then developed the systems of acupuncture (using small needles inserted into particular points along each meridian) and acupressure (using light pressure from the fingers on certain points along each meridian) to help energy flow better, and to help release the energetic 'blocks' in the body. From the beginning, Chinese medicine recognised that the energetic blocks in the body were usually caused by the person's emotions.

The energy of emotions
Whenever we get sick in some way, our emotions usually contain all the information we need to work out why that may be happening.
For example, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that eating bad food makes a person ill. But we're interested in finding out why the person is drawn to the bad food in the first place. What emotion are they repressing, or reacting to unconsciously, when they're reaching for the chips? And that's where the meridians can help us.
If you already know that you have a physical problem, or a physical weakness in a particular area of your body, you can go straight to the relevant meridian, and see what emotions may be hidden underneath. For example, one-sided migraine headaches, sciatica or gallbladder issues all suggest there is a problem blocking the gallbladder meridian. The emotions that are connected to the gallbladder meridian include anger, harsh judgement and rage.
Once you get that crucial piece of the puzzle, you can start working on releasing the negative emotional state that's causing your physical illness. Deal with the underlying emotion, and nine times out of ten, the physical problem will resolve without any further intervention.

All this stuff can sound so strange to us Western-types, who are used to thinking that germs and genes are the prime movers behind all our illnesses and health issues. But until the advent of modern medicine, holistic health principles were the foundation of nearly every historical healing tradition around the globe.
So next time you get a cold, or a headache, don't just reach for the pills; pause and ask yourself what emotional stimulus might have caused it. The answers we get to these questions don't just improve our health, they can also transform our lives.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Energy-Meridians-and-Emotions&id=8976248

Seeing a Chiropractor For Sciatica

By Richard Lobbenberg

Chiropractic and sciatica seem to go hand in hand these days, as many patients come to clinics seeking similar issues. Since sciatica is an ailment of the back and chiropractic care seeks to better align your spine, it only seems natural that sciatic-type pain should be treated with chiropractic adjustments.

Sciatica is a term used to describe impingement of the sciatic nerve (which has five different roots in the spine of your lower back), that causes pain or other nerve-related symptoms that may radiate down part of or along the entire pathway of the nerve. The sciatic nerve runs from your lower back through your hips, down the back of your leg and into your calf muscle, ending in your foot. There is a left sciatic nerve as well as a right. Spinal disc herniation is a common cause of sciatica as is pregnancy, while other causes are more likely muscular-related.

One such muscular-related condition that may cause sciatica is what many call 'piriformis syndrome'. This is a condition of the piriformis muscle, which runs from your lower spine to your femur (thigh bone), and helps with hip rotation. Because your sciatic nerve runs through the piriformis muscle, it is believed that injury to this muscle from a fall, arthritis or difference in leg length may cause inflammation in the muscle that may the impinge the nerve and cause related symptoms.

Sciatic pain is usually described as a dull, aching sort of pain, and other complaints related to nerve compression may also include burning sensations, or numbness and tingling anywhere along the pathway of the nerve.

What happens during a chiropractic treatment for sciatica?
Regardless of how your sciatic pain has developed, the first step for your doctor of chiropractic is to properly diagnose you. This may require x-rays, CT scan or an MRI, or even a nerve conduction test. Once you have been properly diagnosed, chiropractic adjustments will likely focus on your lower back, hips, sacroiliac joints, and other parts of your lower body all in an effort to re-establish proper bio-mechanics and relieve you of your symptoms.

The number of treatments you require will depend on the severity of your condition and your response to treatment. Many sciatic complaints disappear after only a few weeks of treatment, while others may take months to fully heal. It is highly recommended that you follow your chiropractor's professional advice during a course of treatment, as they can best guide you to a full, and effective recovery in an appropriate time frame.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Seeing-a-Chiropractor-For-Sciatica&id=8958410

Therapeutic Massage for Pregnant Women

By Romary R Marquez

Pregnancy is a very crucial stage in a woman's life. Most develop several changes physically, mentally and emotionally. Others develop hormonal imbalances, which makes them prone to depression and mood swings. It can be both overwhelming and stressful at the same time. Physical changes, such as weight gain and feeling of "unattractiveness", also contributes to the increasing level of anxiety for most women undergoing this stage.

One way in easing all the stresses brought about by pregnancy is massage therapy. Massage is normally safe for pregnant women but one must also consider certain contraindications and symptoms such as any unusual discharge of blood and water, illness, fever, vomiting, pre - eclampsia, high blood pressure, abdominal pains and blood clotting disorders. First, you have to seek the advice of your doctor and find the right therapist qualified to do it for you. Once you found the qualified person for this service, you will be prepared for the massage during pregnancy accordingly. The traditional massage is different from the massage being done to pregnant women. Since massage therapy for pregnant women focuses more on the pains and discomforts brought about by pregnancy.

Varieties of massage equipments are being used during therapies. Massage chairs, electric table warmers, massage tables and one of the most natural way is the use of hot massage stones. Many individuals are looking for alternative ways for healing and comfort. The use of hot massage stones are proven to provide comfort and relaxation among pregnant women. The stone's hardness allows the therapist to determine the specific areas of problem with deeper pressure. But, one must remember that it can only be applied on limited areas since it can easily heat up the body's temperature. It improves the circulation to relax the mind and massage tissues at a comfortable pressure level.

There are many benefits that massage therapy can provide to pregnant individuals. First, it eases back pain and sciatica pain which is caused by the undue pressure caused by the baby on the sciatic nerve.

A good therapist could reduce the pain to a very large extent. Stress can also be relieved with the use of different methods used by the therapist during massage. He or she knows the muscles, that completely relaxes the mind and body and most muscular aches during pregnancy can disappear with a good massage. Pregnancy limits the movements and exercises done by an individual, thus limiting the flexibility of the muscles. A massage can help improve the blood circulation of the body making the individual feel renewed all over. Most importantly, a massage therapy can provide the pleasure and comfort most pregnant women needs. The feeling of being pampered and well taken care of, releases the tension and anxieties a pregnant woman feels, even if they are in a very stressful and challenging stage of her life.

Pregnancy can be both exciting and difficult at the same time. It wouldn't hurt if you escape for a while. You are supposed to be happy and glowing, anticipating the birth of a new member in the family. Treat yourself with a massage, release those tensions and enjoy the happiness of giving birth to a new life.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Therapeutic-Massage-for-Pregnant-Women&id=8957903

4 Overlooked Remedies to Reduce Lower Back Pain

By Paramita Chowdhury

Lower back pain is one of the common problems of the elderly people. But now lower pain is becoming quite common for all age groups. Backache generally happens due to muscle stress or injuries. Due to advancement in science, doctors are prescribing medicines to the patients. But sometimes, medicinal treatments do not work well. In such situations, doing certain exercises and taking rest help in reducing the pain.
Sciatica: Causes In Brief
Back muscle pain is the primary cause of the acute ache or sciatica. Lifting heavy objects from the ground, twisting, physical injury or even sudden movements can cause pain in the lower region of vertebral column. Injuries generally stretch the ligaments which increase the pain. Ligament stretches also cause microscopic muscle tears. Once you are feeling the ache, you should immediately consult a doctor. As we well all know that "prevention is better than cure", you must avoid lifting heavy objects and avoid exercises that are harmful. Here are some of the measures for lower backache relief.

1. Release Inner Endorphins
Endorphins naturally occur in the body. When this hormone flows in the blood stream, it blocks the pathway of the pain signals to connect with the brain. This hormone also helps in reducing anxiety and depression from the body. Too much stress is one of the common causes for backache. Some of the techniques that help in releasing the endorphins are massage therapies, acupuncture, deep breathing, sleep and aerobic exercises.

2. Good Sleep
Pain is one of the major causes of insomnia. Out of three patients, two of them generally suffer from sleeping disorders. Inadequate sleep also increases sciatica. Pain in the back portion and insomnia go hand in hand. Taking rest is a good effort in curing the lower backache. Meditation, changing lifestyle, taking healthy food and eating less coffee and drugs can promote sleep.

3. Do the Right Exercise
Exercises are one of the best ways to eliminate pain in the back region. The muscles in the abs and in the lower back region play an important role to support the lower lumbar spine. Exercises generally help in keeping yours abs in good condition. There are certain exercises that help in fighting against sciatica. You can do these exercises regularly to reduce sciatica.

4. Make Yourself Busy
Pain specialists suggest engaging your brain in other activities. Make yourself busy and just avoid the pain sensation. The ways in which your brain interprets and processes pain play a significant role in how you perceive your pain.
These are some of the common remedies that will help you to fight against sciatica. Exercises and sound sleep are great ways for minimizing back pain. Stretches and exercises are very simple and you have to do them carefully.

http://ezinearticles.com/?4-Overlooked-Remedies-to-Reduce-Lower-Back-Pain&id=8938418