Using Sciatica Exercises To Relieve Sciatic Pain
Sciatic nerve pain or sciatica is the result of pressure on the sciatic nerve, which just happens to be the longest nerve in the human body. What this means isthat any pressure felt on that sciatic nerve can actually cause anywhere along the length of it, and as the sciatic nerve stretches from the center of the lower back, right down both legs and into each foot, that is a large nerve, and a big area in which to feel.
If you have had the symptoms of sciatic nerve pain before and have been diagnosed by a medical professional, you will know what sciatic pain feels like, and you will know how to best treat it in the future. The best treatment you can have for sciatic pain is to begin icing the center of lower back at the first signs of sciatic pain. Use this cold compress for ten to 15 minutes every hour or so. This sounds like a lot of icing, and it is, but this will help to reduce the swelling, and as that goes down, the pain level should too, so it is a sensible thing to do.
Now, there are some who hate using ice packs and will not take the time to do this. That is their decision, but what it will cause is a longer bout of sciatic pain and more time spent trying to recover from it.
This is not fair on the friends and family of a sciatic pain sufferer, but there is little you can do to force someone to ice if they really don’t want to.
Once the pain level has subsided a little, it is then time to start trying some gentle exercises. It used to be thought that this was poor decision, and that bed rest was what was needed to stop sciatic pain, but research has now proved that the back needs to keep moving or else it loses some of its strength quite quickly, and recovery will take much longer. The simple exercise of walking on the level is a good exercise, provided it doesn’t cause more leg pain, and to begin with the walking should only be for a few minutes at a time every few hours, on the level, gradually building up on this as the sciatic nerve and your body allows.
Doctors may recommend anti-inflammatories too to help lessen sciatic pain, and only if after many months of pain there is no noticeable improvement, it may be best to see a specialist, and perhaps even think about back surgery to relieve the pressure. Back surgery is not always straight forward, since damaging the spinal column can lead to paralysis, but the surgery depends on what is causing the pressure on the sciatic nerve. It might be due to weight gain in pregnancy, a boy spur growing into the scaitic nerve, or a herniated disc to mention just a few causes.
So to summarize, begin using a cold compress as soon as you feel any discomfort or pain on your sciatic nerve, and hopefully you will be back coping well with life again in the near future.
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Tags: back pain, lower back pain, sciatic nerve pain, sciatic pain, sciatica