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.

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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.

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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.

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