What Is Sciatic Nerve Pain And How To Get Sciatica Relief
If you have sciatic nerve pain, you may feel pain in you low back or buttock. Your sciatica may also go down your your thing, leg and/or foot. Some sciatica patients describe their sciatic nerve pain as a burning type of pain. Besides the sciatic nerve pain, you may also feel weakness, tingling or numbness in your leg or foot. Sciatica can be so severe that that many desperately seek pain relief for sciatic nerve pain.
You may be asking yourself, “How can I relieve sciatic nerve pain?” What relieves sciatic nerve pain depends on what is the cause of sciatic nerve pain. To get sciatic nerve pain relief, let’s go over what can cause sciatic nerve pain. Pain in sciatic nerve is usually caused by a herniated disc… pinching your sciatic nerve root.
There are other conditions that mimic pain in the sciatic nerve,
but they are not true sciatic nerve pain.
Sometimes people will feel sciatica symptoms, but they may not have “true sciatica.” For example, if you have a problem in your sacroiliac joints, also known as SI joints, you’ll have symptoms that mimic sciatica. In this case, your sciatic nerve pain may be more deep… and it’s usually also hard to pinpoint the exact location of the pain.
Piriformis Syndrome can also mimic sciatic nerve pain symptoms. Usually, the your pain will be more above your knee. Some people feel sciatic nerve knee pain Also, you may not feel pain in your low back, but more in your buttocks where your problematic piriformis muscle is located. Keeping your wallet in your back pocket can cause piriformis syndrome. If you carry your wallet in your right back pocket, you may experience right side sciatic nerve pain.
Your sciatic nerve pain in leg and knee may not be from a piriformis syndrome. Your sciatic nerve pain symptoms may be coming from arthritis in your low back spine. If you have arthritis in your low back spine, you may develop a facet syndrome. This facet syndrome can cause referred pain that cause leg pain. Many people mistake this leg pain as sciatica. Because arthritis is common… especially as we age… this referred pain may be more common than the classic sciatica. Osteophytes or bone spurs from your spinal arthritis can also cause severe sciatic nerve pain.
Other causes of sciatic nerve pain include spinal stenosis, spondylolistheis, and pregnancy. Any of these conditions can cause sciatic nerve pain in leg, sciatic nerve pain in foot, and sciatic nerve pain in lower back.
Let’s go over the classic sciatic nerve pain.
How will you know if you have true sciatica?
True sciatica means your sciatic nerve roots are being pinched. Your sciatica symptoms and pain pattern will depend on which of your sciatic nerve roots are being pinched or irritated. Your sciatic nerve is a big nerve with nerve roots that come from your lower back – lower lumbar nerve roots and upper sacral nerve roots. So what exactly is sciatic nerve pain?
Depending on which or your sciatic nerve roots are being pinched, you may experience sciatica nerve pain, tingling, or numbness in any of the following areas:
- on the inside part of your leg and foot
- at the top of your foot
- between your big toe and 2nd toe
- on the outside part of your foot
Also, depending on which of your sciatic nerve roots are being pinched, you may experience the following muscle weakness:
- weakness in moving your foot up – you can’t do heel walk
- weakness in moving your big toe up
- weakness in raising your heel off the ground – you can’t tiptoe
A good sciatica doctor should be able to tell you where your problem is based on where you feel the pain and also based on what muscle weakness you have. However, keep in mind, that sciatica patients don’t always follow the classic sciatica signs and symptoms. This makes treating sciatic nerve pain complicated.
As you can see, to help sciatic nerve pain, your doctor MUST first make the correct sciatic nerve pain diagnosis. There are many sciatic nerve pain causes. What causes sciatic nerve pain is different for different people. This is why symptoms of sciatic nerve pain varies. What is good for sciatic nerve pain for one person may not help bring relief for sciatic nerve pain to another person.
Your treatment will depend on what’s causing your sciatic nerve pain in the first place. So if you want help with sciatic nerve pain, what’s the best treatment for sciatic nerve pain?
There are many sciatic nerve pain remedies. Medication for sciatic nerve pain is a very common way people seek pain relief for sciatic nerve pain. Sciatic nerve pain management to relieve sciatic nerve pain will usually not fix the problem, since the medication will not unpinch your pinched sciatic nerve root.
Some patients try to get relief of their sciatic nerve foot pain or sciatic nerve leg pain using sciatica nerve pain exercises. If you’re interested in sciatic nerve pain relief exercises, order a free copy of the sciatica book that I wrote titled, ““How To Relieve Sciatica And Avoid Back Surgery.” How? Click on the box below that says “FREE SCIATICA BOOK.” Sciatica exercises may help relieve your sciatica.
Here’s a sciatica treatment that has helped a lot of my sciatica patients…
This machine is one of the reasons why I have
a high success rate in helping patients with sciatica.
If you want relief from sciatica nerve pain, you can consult with me to see if I can help you. I’ve treated hundreds of patients with sciatica in Santa Cruz County. Many of them got great results. This non-surgical sciatica treatment has saved many of my patients from back surgery to relieve their sciatic nerve pain.
Here’s a patient talking about her experience with our treatment