Sciatica pain is both incredibly common and often incorrectly self-diagnosed.
Sciatica is: _“pain affecting the back, hip, and outer side of the leg, caused by compression of a spinal nerve root in the lower back, often owing to degeneration of an intervertebral disk.” _(Oxford Dictionary)
The key in this definition is “caused by compression of a spinal nerve root in the lower back.” Many people experience pain that radiates down their leg and automatically call it “Sciatica.” While sciatica is very common, there are many causes of back pain that range from simple muscle tension to true nerve compression.
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Let us first look at true sciatica.
Treating sciatica requires a multi-faceted approach, starting with sorting out why the nerve root is being compressed in the first place. Possibilities include:
• Vertebra degradation
• Herniated or slipped disk
• Bone spur or abnormal growth
• Injury
(Source)
What can make sciatica worse/flare up:
• Certain movements that put pressure on the nerve (i.e. bending over)
• Sitting too long
• Weight Gain
• Pregnancy
A key to alleviating the pain of true sciatica is acupuncture. Both distal and local acupuncture can alleviate the pain but also help the nerve to become un-pinched. Acupuncture in this situation works by activating pain-relieving endorphins and increasing blood flow to the area.
A big concern with any pinched nerve is the eventual side-effects of nerve damage: neuropathy (nerve death). This is experienced as less sensation in the area, meaning that you could stub your toe and not feel it! This is dangerous as not being aware of your fingers and toes could cause you to get hurt, get an infection, and lose a digit.
Thankfully, acupuncture helps with that too! Remember how acupuncture stimulates blood flow to relieve pain? In Chinese Medical theory, our blood contains our consciousness, so wherever blood flows, our awareness goes with it. Blood also warms and activates our limbs. So by receiving acupuncture, people with neuropathy can recover nerve function through the return of blood to the once-forgotten area.
Nerd Corner
_Check out this __study __from 2007 where 76% of patients with peripheral neuropathy improved over one year with regular acupuncture treatment, while only 15% of the control group improved. _
_Or this __study _from 2020 where patients with chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy had significant improvement while the control group, that was treated with gabapentin and vitamin B1, showed no improvement.
Low back pain is by far the most common complaint we treat as acupuncturists. There are dozens of points on the hands and feet that all work to alleviate low back pain. Not to mention the herbal prescriptions that can dispel the pain and continue the treatment long after you have left the acupuncture office.
If you have sciatica pain, I highly recommend looking up your nearest acupuncture clinic, find one that is either covered by your insurance or a community acupuncture clinic.
By receiving regular acupuncture, you can roll back the clock on nerve damage and relieve the pain of sciatica!
Things people call sciatica, but are not actually sciatica.
Often, people will have muscular imbalances in the glutes and hips from too much sitting and not enough exercise. This can cause strange activations and deactivations of muscles in this area, leading to pain that can radiate down the legs. Since many people are without health insurance, they never check to see if the pain they are experiencing is from a nerve root compression, so they call it sciatica and live with it.
Muscular imbalances are easy to relieve in the short term, and take a lot of work in the long term.
In the short term, an acupuncturist can needle some of the most common pain-relieving points in the glute/hip area to assess where the imbalance is located. At some point the acupuncturist will poke around for “Ahshi points,” which are points that make you say “Ah! Right there!” When these points are needled the muscle releases and resets, resolving the issue. That is until the muscle winds back up.
In the long term, the patient should, with the guidance of a physical therapist, adjust their lifestyle and exercise in order to rebalance their muscles to avoid future pain. Doing this will lock in the adjustments that the acupuncturist has made on the offending muscles and extend the pain relief.
If you are one of the 619 million people [worldwide ](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/low-back-pain#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20low%20back%20pain,expansion%20and%20ageing%20(1%29.)with low back pain, please do yourself a favor and walk, run, or crawl your way to your local acupuncturist and get some relief!
Sources:
(peripheral neuropathy study) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17355547/
Chemotherapy study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7341378/
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