Sciatica - Part 1

If you're experiencing pain down the back of your leg, maybe it's traveling to your foot, maybe it stops at your knee. You hop online, you do a quick Google search and you realize that you have pressure on your sciatic nerve, and Google is showing you some stretches and showing you some things that you can do. But it is very important along with some of those stretches and with some of those pain relieving measures, that you also determine the cause of that sciatic nerve pain. Because the sciatic nerve is actually a bundle or a branch of nerves that is connected together that goes down the back of your leg, and it starts at L4 and goes all the way down through the bottom of the pelvis at S3. These nerves gather together, and then they travel through the pelvis down the back of the leg, therefore forming your sciatic nerve, stretching into other areas of your leg, and then into your foot.

Now, if you have radiating pain into any of those areas, it's important to determine the cause because it could be coming from different places along this root. And so it could be stemming from dysfunction of the joints in your spine, contributing to muscle tension and pressure being put onto the nerve at the level of the spine, potentially a disc injury that is putting pressure onto that nerve and then contributing to the radiating pressure down into your leg. Also, there can be dysfunction related into your pelvis that is putting pressure on other nerves from the soft tissue, tightening around that dysfunction as you move throughout your day. Also, we can have things like the pressure from the muscles that sit over and around that nerve as it travels through your pelvis down into your leg that can be tight and putting pressure onto that as well.

So it is very important that we determine the root cause, and a chiropractic examination is the perfect place to determine that. We will do a full examination of your spine and pelvis to make sure that we understand exactly the root cause of what is occurring, to put the pressure onto the nerve that is contributing to the radiating dysfunction that you're noticing. And so if you are experiencing this, I would strongly encourage you to seek a chiropractic examination so that we can determine what the root cause is, and then more importantly, help you take care of it from there.

Be Well

Dr. Daniel