The 2-Minute Rule for Health Tips

Sciatica, the pain is literally a pain in your butt. And it can be so annoying, you may feel like it's never going to go away. And sitting, standing, walking all these things or Eric, aggravating it and irritating it. Well, what actually could be causing your sciatic nerve pain is a caused by a problem in your back a disc herniation or something else. So keep watching this video if you are dealing with sciatica, and you want to learn more about the what the root cause could be, and also how to ease it without medications or surgery. My name is Dr. Dawn on the loan, I'm a physical therapist that treats lots of back pain, and sciatica. So I have helped so many people overcome this by some simple ways of easing their symptoms, but also what you can do to understand your body a little bit better and to find out if it's truly coming from your back, because that will direct your treatment plan. And also, some of the exercises that you might be looking up online and trying to do are actually going to make it worse rather than better. So here's my spine model, if you can see this has the pelvis here in the front, and looking at your spine from the front. Each of these levels, that's the vertebral body here, and your bone and in between each level, you have what's called a intervertebral disc, you have a disc that is filled with water, it's filled with fluid. And if you can think of a sunny side up egg, you have a yolk in the middle and the white part around it. Well, that's kind of what describes your discs. So that inner part, it can protrude out through a weakened outer layer of your disk. If you've done a lot of repetitive activity or you are overtime, you're sitting in bad posture, you're lifting heavy items, you're putting a lot of strain on your back over time. This can cause a herniated disc, and a herniated disc can be very painful, and can cause some of these sciatic symptoms and pain down your leg. Well, how do you truly know if you have that. So if you look at this model, here, I have a model of what looks like a herniated disc. So you can see as that yoke or the middle part of the disc has pretreated out through a tear in the outer layer here that can put pressure on one of the nerve roots there in your back. So you have five lumbar vertebrae, those lower part of your back here. And those lumbar vertebrae, they have a nerve root at each level that comes out from your spinal cord at each level. So those nerve roots will join together in the back part of your hip tip under those hip muscles to form the sciatic nerve and the sciatic nerve, then it goes down from the buttock area down the back of your leg and branches off to different nerves that go into your calf and into the bottom of your foot. So some people with sciatica, they may feel numbness or tingling in their foot or sometimes even weakness down their whole leg. But if you're getting this pain in the back part of your hip down to your hamstring. Many times people describe that as I have sciatic pain or I have sciatica. So there's a top three things that I hear from my clients and also what I've learned over the years, 20 years being a physical therapist on what things can usually provoke a herniated disc. And if you've noticed this already, some of the movements and activities that you're doing are related to this, then it could be caused by having a disc injury in your back. So number one, if you notice anytime you bend forward and this is not something to test over and over again, I would not recommend that. But if you bend down to tie your shoes, you're bending over to pull your pants on anything where you're really flexing forward and your symptoms get worse or you're feeling more of that pain and discomfort. Well that could be caused by the herniation in your back. Now a disc usually does not feel good with any kind of flex forward motion but feels better with extension. So sometimes we may recommend lying on your stomach taking pressure off the nerve root they're getting more blood flow and circulation. A painful nerve lacks that blood flow and circulation. So getting in positions of comfort are going to help things heal and help bring more blood flow to that area. Now flexing for Word don't repeat that over and over. But if you find what has happened and provokes that sciatic pain from coming on, and you notice it throughout your day, well, it could be coming from your back there. Now, number two, if you have done a lot of repetitive strain with your posture, you sit at a desk all day, you notice some achiness, that happened in your back maybe a few weeks ago didn't quite think anything of it, or you lifted something heavy. And then a couple days later, your back is starting to hurt before you had the true sciatic pain. Well, it that may be caused by that disc, tearing or weakening there, usually over time is what caused the disc injury. So if the pain did start in your back, then it could be caused by a herniation in one of those areas in your lower back, or lumbar spine. And then the third thing that we see a lot of and this is something that we test, with our clients that have sciatica, if we bring the leg up straight with the knee straight, and it looks like this, lying down on your back, and we'd bring one leg up, we usually right away, you'll start getting some pain in your back. And not only does that legs start to hurt, but if you have some discomfort in your lower back, then it could be coming from putting extra strain or tension on that nerve that's coming from the nerve root in your back. Therefore, a disc problem could be irritating it. Now if you're under the age of 45, or 50, usually a disc herniation will be more of the culprit. If you're aging 45 and beyond, well, disc injuries are more rare because the discs start to dry out. They're made of fluid and they start to dry out with age. And therefore it could be something with having arthritic changes or having some more pressure around the nerve root from something else. But usually younger people are more affected by disc injuries. So what can you actually do to help it? Well, the positions that I described a bending forward are really lifting your leg up and putting strain on that nerve, those kinds of stretches are definitely going to make it worse. So you want to not do any of those. Like I mentioned before, you can lie in a position on your stomach go into a little bit of extension. Sometimes we even recommend doing some small little press UPS when you're on your stomach, that can take pressure off of the nerve root, if it truly is coming from your back. Another thing that you can do is laying down with some pillows under your legs, just allowing those back muscles to relax, because the back muscles, they will shut down and they will start spasming because they're trying to protect your back. So you want to treat the muscles with care. Using some ice or heat, something that is going to provide a little bit of relief to those muscles around your lower back can also be very helpful. You also want to find a position of comfort. So whether that's on your side kind of side bent a little bit, putting some pillows in between your knees, or maybe being on your side and lifting one knee slightly toward your chest, you may find a position that's going to be different for every person, but that can take some stress off the nerve root there and allow you to actually get some sleep and get in a position where you're providing more blood flow and circulation to that area. It is not good to sit out for a long period of time more than 1520 minutes because that can cut off that blood supply to the nerve as well and put more compression there therefore irritating your sciatic symptoms. So whatever your tastes or symptoms, try to just take a few days to not do those things and get in positions that are going to be more comfortable and easing the pressure. You also want to see a physical therapist someone that is going to teach you the things that are going to be right for your body. And not just Google exercises online because sciatica is going to be very different for every person. But I hope you learned something from this video if you truly do have a disc herniation this can be healed conservatively without having surgery. And if you start losing blood flow circulation to that nerve and you your leg starts getting weak, or you lose bowel or bladder function or you're having pain or numbness in the Seattle area here those are definitely red flags. You want to go see a doctor right away or go to the emergency room because that this may be putting too much pressure on an area that does Maybe putting pressure on an area that you want to get checked out right away. But if it truly is this sciatic pain down your leg, I know how bad that can feel right now, but it can get better if you do the right things for it. So comment below let me know what you learn from this video. If you have sciatic pain and you want to learn more about it, ask a question below. We'd love to answer those click here and share this with a friend someone else that you know that maybe is dealing with this issue and is looking for a solution. So thanks for watching and hit subscribe. We let two videos a week go out and you're going to learn lots more info about other topics related to back pain and sciatica from this channel, thanks for watching.