The sciatic nerve is a grouping of nerve fibers that exit the lumbar spine in the lower back and travel through the muscles and tissues of the buttocks, down the leg, and into the calves and feet. It is the largest nerve in your body. Sciatica refers to impingement or irritation of the sciatic nerve. Sciatic nerve pain feels different based on the compression area, the impingement’s severity, and the problem’s duration. Patients usually experience any range of symptoms, including:
- Lower back pain
- Pain in the glutes or buttocks
- Numbness and tingling
- Cramping in the legs, ankles, and feet
- Radiating pain down the leg
Some people feel all these sensations at different times, some only down one leg, and some feel the symptoms travel back and forth between legs.
$49 New Patient Sciatica Special
Comprehensive Consultation
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Report of Findings
Misalignments in the lower back or pelvis can irritate the sciatic nerve. These misalignments can also cause swelling and tearing in the lumbar discs, irritating the sciatic nerve. During a disc injury, the body will try stabilizing the spine, triggering muscle spasms. Those spasms can also lead to sciatica. These issues, along with previous sports injuries, falls, or car accidents, can be risk factors for sciatica.
What is more common and often overlooked, however, is the sedentary nature of our society. When we sit, 35% more stress is placed on our spine, joints, and discs. People who sit for most of their workday can gradually develop biomechanical imbalances that lead to misalignments in the spinal column that irritate and compress the sensitive sciatic nerve fibers. Sedentary lifestyles are more likely to create imbalance or weakness in certain muscle groups in the legs, glutes, lower back, and lower abdomen, all risk factors for developing sciatica.
Any symptom in the body, including sciatica, is a warning sign of dysfunction in that area. The longer any area of dysfunction is left unaddressed, the more time it has to progress and create more severe problems. It can spread to other parts of the spine and continue to disrupt the body’s musculoskeletal balance. This leads to more complicated treatment and longer recovery times.
The conventional approach to treating sciatica focuses on simple soft tissue work, like stretches and strengthening exercises, but the holistic approach of corrective chiropractic considers a person’s entire biomechanical situation. Muscle tension; spinal, sacral, hip, and pelvic alignment; the health of the discs; muscle strength and tone; we will evaluate every situation to create a comprehensive, lasting correction that addresses the cause, not just the pain. We don’t just want to do simple stretches or take a steroid shot, muscle relaxer, or painkiller to numb the pain. We want to identify and correct all of the contributing factors to address the cause of the problem and prevent recurrence down the road.
How Our Sciatica Care Plan Works
Obsessive About
The Cause
Stop focusing on your symptoms! To get real results, feel great, and live a vibrant life, you have to correct the cause of your problem, not just treat the symptoms.
Comprehensive
Approach
Our doctors will design a comprehensive care plan based on YOU – your goals and exam findings. This gets real results in your body and transforms your health.
Lasting Results & Continual Improvement
Great health is not a few weeks of feeling good. You deserve a lifetime of vitality. We’ll help you get the results you want and partner with you for a life without limits.
How We Treat Sciatica in Missouri City, TX
Comprehensive Consultation and Exam
Our goal is to get to the root cause of your sciatica so we can completely correct and resolve the problem. You and a doctor will meet so they can understand more about your health history, exactly what’s going on with your body, what you’re experiencing, how the issue is affecting your life, and what your goals are.
We’ll do a physical examination and any necessary spinal imaging. A picture is worth 1000 words. Imaging will help us identify all the factors involved in your unique situation and create a customized plan for correction.
Specific Chiropractic Care in Missouri City, TX
Subluxation is any spinal segment that is not moving through its full range of motion or is misaligned from its normal positioning. Every week that passes with a subluxation, more stress accumulates in the spine, leading to more wear and tear on the joints and disc connective tissue. As this dysfunction becomes more habituated, it can spread and become more severe.
Just like a cavity, a subluxation can begin as asymptomatic. It will eventually reach a certain point where the biomechanical stress is too much to handle, potentially leading to arthritis, degeneration, and disc herniation. It also weakens and irritates the nerves that exit the spinal column. These nerves are the master regulating control system for the entire body, coordinating all bodily movements, muscle tone, organ function, and health processes. In the lumbar spine, these nerves control digestion, your bowel and bladder, reproduction, and your legs, feet, ankles, and calves.
Chiropractic adjustments realign the spine to correct spinal biomechanical imbalances, relieving stress on the joints and discs, removing nerve irritation, and allowing the nervous system to better control and regulate the body without interference. All without the use of medication, injections, or surgery. While conventional treatment focuses on pain relief, we correct the root cause of the problem to address pain effectively AND to prevent relapse or re-injury. Just treating the pain symptoms and neglecting the underlying cause allows the condition to progress to degenerative changes or a more complex problem, ultimately costing you more time, effort, energy, and frustration.
Custom Therapeutic Exercise Plan
Your “core” muscles stabilize and support normal spinal alignment. There are also muscles in the buttocks and pelvis that maintain the proper balance of mobility and tone to support alignment. When these muscles weaken, they create an imbalance, which allows the skeletal system to shift out of alignment. Other muscles may compensate for this weakness by becoming tight or spastic and can pinch and irritate adjacent nerves.
Custom exercises help restore balance and stability to relieve any impingement caused by muscle imbalance or improper joint alignment. While adjustments help correct structure, exercises reinforce those adjustments to maintain lasting changes. Some of the best sciatica pain relief exercises are:
- Full body wobble exercise
- Cat-camel
- Piriformis and glute stretches
- Scorpion exercise
- Isometrics
- Superman
- McKinsey extension exercises
- Core strengthening
Common Causes of Sciatica in Missouri City, TX
Herniated Lumbar Discs
Between every spinal segment, both above and below, is a connective tissue known as your spinal disc. 80% of the disc is a gel-like fluid wrapped in a fibrous connective tissue. This structure provides shock absorption for the compressive forces of the body’s weight and acts as a spacer that allows nerve roots to exit the spinal column to control every bodily function.
Spinal misalignments or acute injuries change your body weight distribution, which can ultimately injure your spinal discs. When weight shifts abnormally to one side of a disc, the gel-like center swells against the disc’s external wall, like a ketchup packet, irritating the adjacent nerves. If the pressure is significant enough, the jelly interior of the disc herniates, tearing the connective tissue wrapper and making direct contact with nearby nerves.
Disc herniation symptoms can range from sharp to searing, burning pain. They can trigger muscle spasms, locking you in a specific position in an effort to protect further injury to the disc. The pain can be intense and very disruptive to everyday life.
The best treatment for disc herniation is comprehensive corrective chiropractic care that involves specific adjustments based on your unique exam findings and imaging to reduce biomechanical stressors. Full spinal wobble exercises help rehabilitate the disc, moving it through all six planes of vertebral motion, hydrating it, and flooding it with the essential nutrients it needs to heal. Also, rehabilitative exercises are often used to balance and strengthen the lower back, leg, and core muscles.
Degenerative Disc Disease
A healthy disc is like a hydrated kitchen sponge. If you take that kitchen sponge and lay it on the counter for a couple of weeks, it becomes dehydrated, thin, hard, stiff, and even cracked. The sponge is not functional in this state. That’s similar to what happens to your disc whenever you have an abnormal load or loss of range of motion due to spinal misalignments and fixations. The pumping mechanisms that normally hydrate the discs with movement are ineffective, causing the spine to be stiff and achy, especially after long periods of immobility, like first thing in the morning, after a long car ride, or after a day sitting at your desk.
Additionally, the discs act as a space between the vertebrae to allow nerves to exit the spinal cord. This is how the brain communicates with the rest of the body. Normally, the discs have plenty of space to work with, but when discs degenerate, that spacing becomes smaller and smaller, interfering with nerve signals. This diminishes communication of function to every cell, tissue, muscle, and organ that nerve controls, creating several health problems. Irritation of the sciatic nerve can affect digestion, reproduction, fertility, bowel and bladder function, and function of the lower extremities.
Corrective chiropractic care restores proper spinal structure, range of motion, biomechanical alignment, and balance. Healthy spine function prevents degenerative disc disease and creates optimal healing conditions.
Spinal Stenosis
The wheels on your car require precise balance for weight distribution. You may not notice an imbalance at first, but little by little, mile after mile, it abnormally wears on your tires. The same is true of your spine; without proper alignment, balance is off, and wear and tear accumulate. The body responds to abnormal wear and tear on the spine by adding microscopic calcium particles to stabilize and strengthen the spine. These deposits block the space where the nerve roots exit, compressing and irritating adjacent nerves. Spinal stenosis is irreversible, but you can actively prevent the misalignments that lead to imbalances through chiropractic adjustment and regular disc maintenance.
Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction (SI Joint Pain)
You have two sacroiliac joints where the left and right ilium meet the sacrum. There are numerous ways a pelvis can rock out of alignment, become jammed or dysfunctional, and, over time, create a specific, isolated pain to the SI joint. Compromised biomechanical alignment can create spastic muscle tissue and compress upon the joint and nerve roots that travel through that joint – the sciatic nerve. Any abnormal rotation of the sacrum or jamming of the joint can stretch, irritate, or compress the sciatic nerve.
Spondylolisthesis
Spinal ligaments hold one lumbar vertebra in place on top of another. If that ligament becomes unstable, ruptured, or torn, that vertebra can slide forward, out of position, compressing and irritating adjacent nerves. We often see this during pregnancy as the ligaments become more elastic. Spinal imaging is the only way to know if a spondylolisthesis is present in the cause of your sciatica. The best way to treat sciatica caused by spondylolisthesis is, unfortunately, spinal surgery. Physical therapy and even chiropractic have had limited success with correcting this type of permanent damage to the lumbar spine. However, specific chiropractic techniques improve joint mechanics and can functionally relieve nerve pressure. This slows progression or complications that can result in helping them better manage the issue.
Subluxation
A subluxation is any area of the spinal column where the vertebrae are misaligned or fixated, prevented from going through its full range of motion, and compressing adjacent nerves. A subluxation could cause muscle weakness, tension, or spasm. It can irritate nerves, weakening nerve flow and interfering with the function of any tissues those nerves control – for sciatica that’s the lower extremities, digestive and reproductive function, bowel and bladder function, and even fertility.
Subluxation is detected through a physical exam, range of motion, palpation, and orthopedic tests, and spinal imaging. This helps inform the most effective correction for your specific situation. A chiropractor is the only doctor specifically dedicated to the analysis, detection, and correction of vertebral subluxations, making them the best choice for sciatica treatment.
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Missouri City, TX 77459
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I see a doctor or chiropractor for sciatica?
A chiropractor is always the best place to start. Typically, the only treatment a medical doctor would provide for sciatica is steroid injections, painkillers, or muscle relaxers. These recommendations aim to relieve sciatica symptoms but do nothing to address, rehabilitate, or correct the cause. Chiropractors are experts in this arena.
What can I do to relieve my sciatica pain?
The best treatment for sciatica pain is corrective chiropractic care combined with in-office rehab exercises and home care protocols. These will be developed based on your specific exam findings with the doctor.
What is the best treatment for sciatica?
Corrective chiropractic care is always the best treatment for sciatica.
How should I lay with sciatica?
Lay on your side with a pillow between your knees to create a neutral spine and relieve nerve irritation.
How long does sciatica last?
Sciatica can last anywhere from a day to several months or longer, depending on the severity and complicating factors – spinal alignment, disc problems, muscular imbalances, and ongoing injuries. Recovery time also depends on past injuries and how long you’ve been dealing with sciatic pain.
Can stretching make sciatica worse?
Overstretching can actually make sciatica worse if there are other complicating factors besides simply a tight muscle, which is usually the case. Although tight muscles are often present with sciatica, they are not the only factor involved and are not the only things that will need to be addressed to correct the problem.
How do I get my sciatic nerve to stop hurting?
For temporary sciatica relief, you can try piriformis stretches, cat-camels, and lumbar extension exercises, but the most effective strategy is to consult a corrective chiropractor.
What causes sciatica flare-ups?
Sciatica flare-ups can be caused by the progression of underlying spinal or pelvic misalignments or biomechanical imbalances, a sedentary lifestyle, or acute injuries.
Should I go to the gym with sciatica?
Every situation is different, but generally speaking, some light, gentle motion and mobility work help with sciatica. If things feel dull, stiff, and achy, motion and mobility will help calm the situation. When movements at the gym are sharp, stabbing, burning, or leading to numbness, you should avoid that movement and try something else until you consult a qualified corrective chiropractor.
$49 New Patient Sciatica Special
Comprehensive Consultation
Complete Physical Examination
All Necessary Digital X-rays
Report of Findings
