Thursday, June 13, 2013

Sciatica and Back Pain Treatment


spinal stenosis



What is the Sciatica?
Sciatica is a term given to the pain experienced when the sciatic nerve is causing a person pain. Therefore let's take a look at the spine. A human spine is made up of a number of individual bones linked together with tendons. Discs cushion the bones or vertebrae. These bones and discs protect the spinal nerve and all of its tendrils that jut out of narrow openings in the spine to service the rest of your body. If a nerve becomes agitated or pinched in between the bones this results in pain. The typical vertebrae that impinge on the sciatic nerve are the L4, L5 L6 and S-1. This is the largest nerve in your body and can cause the most debilitating pain.

What are the symptoms of Sciatica?
One of the symptoms is muscle weakness and a 'pins and needles' feeling in the legs can occur or this might even be felt in the feet. Numbness can also be felt anywhere along the length of the affected leg. Pain can also be experienced with muscle cramps. Or it might just consist of intermittent shooting pains, or a sharp pain when moving in specific directions.

Can Sciatica be treated?
Yes, sciatica can be treated with surgery, chiropractic care, drugs and preventative care. The preferred method is preventative care like gentle stretching and exercise. Chiropractors offer stretching exercises. However they are usually generic and do not offer a lot of benefit to the person doing them. A better alternative is visiting an exercise therapist, physical therapist or sports therapist. They look at how the muscles are functioning and recommend activities that will promote strength in under used muscles and help relax those that are pulling your joints in inappropriate directions thereby minimizing pain.

If the pain is severe, painkillers such as the NSAIDs [Aspirin, Paracetamol, Ibuprofen, Naproxen] can help reduce the inflammation, reducing the pain as well. Stronger painkillers, prescribed by your medical advisor, can also help. These painkillers, such as Co-codamol, Tramadol, Fentanyl, Dihydrocodeine, amongst others, are much stronger and can help you get an exercise programme underway.

Probably one of the best in this group is Co-codamol because it has the inflammation reducing qualities of the NSAIDs as it contains Paracetamol and it has the benefit of the stronger painkiller, Codeine. An added advantage is that it comes in different strengths, an 8/500 strength usually being sufficient unless the pain is very severe. If this is the case, 30/500 could be prescribed by your medical advisor.

Surgery is also an option but, considering the invasive nature of this option, it is only ever considered when a full program of exercising and other conservative treatment has failed to correct the problem. This is never an option to be taken lightly - especially as the underlying cause has not been dealt with, perhaps re-occurring in a different area.

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