Sciatica often happens without warning

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Sciatica often happens without warning By Joe DiVincenzo
On the Mend



What started as a bit of stiffness in your hip has progressed to an excruciating throb all the way down the back of your leg. You're limping because you're afraid to bear weight on your heel, and it's been weeks with no sign of improvement. If this is familiar, you may be dealing with sciatica.

The term sciatica was created to describe the symptoms commonly associated with irritation of the sciatic nerve. The sciatic nerve originates from a group of nerves exiting the spinal cord in the region of the lower back, and is responsible for movement and sensation of the back of the leg.

Sciatica happens without warning in the majority of cases. While there is an occasional history of trauma, most often there is no significant history of injury. Patients may first notice difficulty with common mobility tasks such as walking and rising from a chair, and find that being immobile for too long will also cause discomfort. These limitations will ultimately become worse, and over time may become impossible because of a combination of pain and stiffness.

The main hallmark of sciatica is to produce a surprisingly strong stiffness of the nervous system, clinically termed "adverse neural tension." Patients describe it as an intense feeling of tightness and often use adjectives such as "gripping," "restrictive" and "deep" and also say they feel as if "it needs to be stretched out."

The nature of sciatic pain is interesting in its progression and in how it changes over the course of a day. Classically, in the morning people will show remarkable stiffness, especially in the first few steps out of bed. Once "warmed up," an hour or two after waking, they may feel more relaxed and mobile. Sometime in the afternoon there will be a transition from tightness to a pain that feels much like a toothache. Toward the evening, the intensity will rise and the pain will begin to throb. When it reaches this stage, people will rarely find relief with changes in position or with medication.

Clinical management of sciatica involves a host of different treatments, all with the specific goal of alleviating tightness from the back and hips. These treatments include dynamic nerve stretching, manual joint mobilization and manipulation and strengthening of weak areas.

The most effective therapeutic programs for sciatica focus on relieving neural tension from the affected areas. Identification of which body part is at fault is vital in exercise prescription, and it is common for your home program to be directed at your back or hip, even though the pain may be felt in other places such as the knee and foot.

The intensity of the disorder is usually magnified during the physical therapy visit. When an inflamed nerve is tugged and pulled, it sends a pain signal to the brain. This form of treatment often causes substantial discomfort, but is also the fastest and most effective way to reach full resolution of the problem.

Cases that display signs of nervous-system tightness historically have responded better to frequency rather than intensity when it comes to the home program. To ensure the stiffness does not have the opportunity to settle back in, your therapist may ask you to perform a particular set of exercises up to five or six times per day. Classic home exercises take the shape of many treatments performed in the clinic, such as hamstring stretching, trunk rotation, trunk extension and hip mobilization.

Untreated, sciatica can become chronic, sometimes lasting years. Nearly 80 percent of cases will resolve without treatment, usually within 12 months. With physical therapy intervention and home exercises, patients can expect to resume normal walking within a couple of weeks, and full return to all previous activities typically inside of a month.

Joe DiVincenzo is a physical therapist and clinical specialist in manual therapy. He works in the outpatient division of Beverly Hospital and writes "On the Mend" weekly..Questions may be submitted to On the Mend, c/o Salem News, 32 Dunham Road, Beverly, MA 01915 or e-mail features@eagletribune.com. PrintThis

Note: The above sports to be flexible, relieve, effectively, from light to heavy. If the increase in daily activities, showed that treatment of properly, can increase the amount of exercise in therapy. If no response after treatment of that activity was too light, the need to increase the amount of exercise. If the response after re-treatment, can not resume after the break, or even add to the pain that excessive movement, causing a new injury, this time to reduce the amount of exercise or stop the movement, rest a few days. After the rest still can not relieve pain, not fitting that treatment should find rehabilitation measures. It is worth noting that sports therapy of acute sciatica is not applicable.

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Additional information:

From www.salemnews.com:
Resource for back pain and neck pain information on treatments, conditions, back pain exercises, surgery, prevention.
Relieve your sciatica pain by engaging in a regular program of gentle sciatica exercises. Best of all, you can do them right now in your own home.
Sciatica refers to an inflammation of the sciatic nerve. Weight lifting, strenuous yoga poses or any other type of exercise that may tighten.
First, exercise in general will help with sciatica and back pain. Second, there are specific exercises for sciatica that can be helpful.
A exercise bench particularly suitable for persons with lower back pain wherein the bench comprises a hard foam ridged mat hinged to an upper body support.
How to Treat Sciatica With Exercise. Even though you might want to treat your sciatic pain by resting and lying down, the best remedy.
Nowadays doctors recommend light exercises for sciatica which help in. This type of sciatic exercise is good for the patients suffering.
There are a number of different conditions that can cause sciatica pain, which by itself is a general term indicating pain caused.

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