It's early in the morning. You open your eyes feeling groggy and nervous. You cannot remember why you are nervous until wait....your back is not hurting. Neither is your leg, or your butt or your foot. You wiggle your toes to see if they are numb and by golly, they aren't.
You have been through this before though. You know that once you stand and your feet hit the ground that it's a 50/50 chance, maybe even 70/30 that the sharp shooting pain will return. You roll over gingerly, slip your feet off the edge, slide on to the edge of the bed and then down to the floor and......F***! There it is. Of course there it is! It's always there, waiting for you to forget so that it can suck as bad as ever.
This is honestly one of the worst feelings in the world. Whenever I treat someone with sciatic pain they are hardly able to tell me how long it's been going on. They say two months, then a week later tell me about a time 3 months ago that they felt it playing golf. Then another time 4 months ago when it started on a long car drive.
Why is that nerve so angry? Why can it last so long? Doesn't the body heal?
The answer to your question is simple. Your nerves come out of your spine, run between, under and through some muscles down the back of your butt and into your leg, all the way down to your foot. They branch off as they go to provide electric excitement to muscles around them and relay sensation back up to the spinal cord. If the nerve gets insulted by either a very prolonged, awkward position, or a sudden even more awkward movement, the nerve can get irritated. If it continues to fire off due to this insult, firing up the muscles around it, it can get insulted again. Not the best reaction but have you ever been mad at stubbing your toe and punched the fridge, give your sciatic nerve a break.
The treatment consists of you calming down the muscles around the nerve, get the nerve moving comfortably, and gradually returning to ALL the activities you were doing before. Those that you want to do of course. I would never make you do dishes if your significant other has gotten into the routine and it's best not to break their good habits am I right?
If sciatic nerve pain is your problem then I have your solution. Give me a call and we can discuss your plan for getting over this problem.
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