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5 Tips to Healing Sciatica Pain: Your Guide to Get Rid of Chronic Pain
January 28, 2023
Low Back Pain
5 tips to healing sciatica pain: Your guide to get rid of Chronic pain
In today’s blog post, I wanted to spend some time on a hugely relevant topic for many patients: the dreaded low back pain and sciatica.
It’s debilitating, crazy painful, and frustrating. At a certain point, you’re wondering if sciatica pain will go away or if it will linger on forever.
Spoiler alert: it’s not a forever thing, nor does it need to be. You can be well on your way to a pain-free life with the correct diagnosis and treatment.
Call us to get Free Consultation at 972-777-0836
We understand this can be a lot of information and overwhelming: if you are looking for more support and answers, set up a free consultation with our Low Back Specialist, Satoru Ozawa. Share your story, get your questions answered, and learn how you can set yourself up for tremendous success in achieving a healthy life.
Sciatica causes: #1 Spinal stenosis
For most people dealing with sciatica pain and low back pain, the most likely culprit is a little-known condition called Spinal stenosis. It Sounds like a big, fancy word. But all it means is that the spinal nerve and the tunnel through which the nerve travels are narrowed down and compressed. Most people suffer spinal stenosis in Lumber L4, L5, and S1.
These nerves travel from the spine and spread to the buttocks to thighs, calves, and feet, which we call Sciatic Nerves. The nerve controls the muscles in the thigh, calves, and feet, such as squatting, standing, walking, and bending your knees. It’s incredible how much of our daily living activities require these motions.
The nerves run through the spinal canal ( like a tunnel), which allows them to send nerve information from the brain to the legs. Because the tunnel is swollen and obstructed with debris, this creates a lot of friction, dramatically impacts your low back mobility, and causes a lot of pain.
There are medical tests to determine if the narrowing of the tunnels is the source of the problem: X-Ray, MRI, or CT scan.
The test is positive if you feel pain in the low back pain or if there’s pain radiating down to the legs.
While the exact cause of spinal stenosis is wear and tear syndrome, which is aging and developing over time, people over the age of 50 are a higher chance of developing spinal stenosis. It is generally accepted that the condition is associated with osteoarthritis, bone spur, herniated disc, and spinal injury.
So, if you’re wondering why you get sciatica, this may be the answer.
Spinal stenosis
- Pain is in the low back or the buttocks.
- some people may have to swell around the spinal canal in X-ray, MRI, or CT scan
- Low back’s range of motion is limited because of the pain
TOP 5 tips on your road to recovery
The great news is that most people recover with rest and time. Drastic measures like surgery are not commonly successful; the chance of success is 50/50. But sometimes, it feels like the injury lasts forever and isn’t going away. It’s for the reason that we’ve compiled some of the best advice on how to speed up your recovery.
- Acupuncture: This should be #1 on your list. Acupuncture is incredibly effective at reducing pain and healing time. It’s also great at reducing swelling and inflammation, which helps give your low back more range of motion with less pain. Consider this your number one holistic alternative to nerve block injection into the low back.
- Rest: This is the easiest yet the most challenging advice for many people. Telling them not to work hard or stop isn’t easy. For this reason, you need support from the people around you. Spouses and surrounding family members should be more active in helping you so that you don’t have to do any of the activities that might aggravate your condition.
- Use heat: Give your low back a break by applying a heat pack or hot bath. Heat helps speed up the natural healing process due to the blood flow and reduces swelling and pain. This self-treatment is the cheapest yet hardest advice for many people.
- Meditation / positive mindset: Pain is a natural danger alarm your brain creates. You have to reverse the neural circuit in the brain. In order to do that, you have to be positive mood and write down a few things you are grateful for each day. Laugh; laughter is a powerful way to change the neural circuits in the brain and reduce a danger signal.
- Change the way you lift heavy things: Most people lift heavy thing using their back muscles, like bending forward. Avoid lifting things this way. Instead, try to bend your knee and the back straight. It means you can avoid the pressure on the spinal nerve when you lift.
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Call or Text 972-777-0836
We understand this can be a lot of information and overwhelming: if you are looking for more support and answers, set up a free consultation with our Low Back Specialist, Satoru Ozawa. Share your story, get your questions answered, and learn how you can set yourself up for tremendous success in achieving a healthy life.
Is Acupuncture Effective for Spinal Stenosis and Sciatica?
Yes. Acupuncture is very effective for spinal stenosis and sciatica. We examined your low back and muscle tightness during the initial acupuncture session. You may be unable to bend forward or lean back due to pain. The treatments focused on reducing inflammation and swelling and restoring movement in the low back. Acupuncture has been shown in many studies to be incredibly practical in reducing pain and inflammation due to its ability to stimulate the body to release its natural painkillers. So, you start feeling relieved from the pain after each session.
Within six weeks to 3 months, most of our patients looked back to normal, and they were close to 80% recovered in terms of back mobility. Even then, recovery is not guaranteed.
When Should I start Acupuncture?
As a general rule of thumb, the sooner one receives treatment, the better the prognosis.
Some patients come for low back pain treatment months or even years after the initial onset, and these chronic cases are often more complex and take a much longer time to achieve results. Even then, recovery is not guaranteed.
Regarding the frequency of treatments, Acupuncture follows a simple rule. Acute and relatively new conditions are most effectively treated with more frequent visits, whereas chronic and old conditions can benefit from more widespread treatments. In other words, if you just had an onset of low back pain, you will probably be prescribed 2-3 treatments per week in order to get the most effective results, and chronic cases will generally come in only once a week.
If you or a loved one was diagnosed with a low back pain and want to learn more about Acupuncture and whether it’s appropriate for your case, send us a message through our contact page.
I hope it helps.
Satoru Ozawa, L.Ac, ATC
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