Sciatica

Many people dealing with certain types of chronic pain are keen on exploring treatment options that do not involve taking oral pills everyday or every other time.

One go-to alternative is chiropractic care. Chiropractic care has numerous positive outcomes for patients.

Here are five ways your health could benefit from it.

1. Can Help Minimize Scoliosis Symptoms

Scoliosis is an abnormal curving of the spine. A normal spine has a curve at the shoulder and the lower back. People with scoliosis have a c-shaped back or a back that’s curved from side to side.

Chiropractic care can help improve the Cobb angle of people with scoliosis. The Cobb angle is a measurement of the degree of the side-to-side deformity present.

While the deformation is unlikely to be cured, some studies have shown some notable improvements.

2. Eases Headache Symptoms

Chiropractic care that involves spinal manipulation is especially useful for headaches that originate from the neck. The same is true for tension headaches.

This is because a back misalignment is known to cause muscle tension and pain, resulting in migraine and tension headaches. Headaches are second to back pain when it comes to the most common conditions chiropractors treat.

Chiropractic care can help prevent headaches or minimize the symptoms to allow one to enjoy a better quality of life.

3. Reduce Inflammation

Inflammation is the main cause of pain, tension and joint problems. So much so that it has been directly linked to numerous diseases, including cancer, chronic pain and heart disease.

Chiropractic adjustments are also known to lessen inflammation. The results of these include chronic lower back relief and reduced joint pain and muscle tension.

Reduced inflammation in the body can also reduce an individual’s risk of contracting diseases and conditions associated with high inflammation in the body.

4. Sciatica

Sciatica refers to pain that radiates along the path of the sciatic nerve. This type of pain branches from your lower back, through your buttocks and hips and down each leg. This is typically experienced in one side of the body and is caused by a pressurized or damaged sciatic nerve.

Because sciatica can be painful, it can easily lead to over medication.

What chiropractic care does for sciatica is relieve pressure on the sciatic nerve that’s causing sciatica.

Research has shown that patients getting chiropractic care for sciatica experience less pain and have a reduced number of pain days. Both outcomes help improve their quality of life.

5. It Helps With Neck and Lower Back Pain

Most patients that go to a chiropractor often need help with neck and lower back pain.

Medication and surgery are other treatments offered for neck and back pain. However, these can be dangerous, ineffective and can get quite expensive.

A chiropractic adjustment is often a good place to start when evaluating one’s options for chronic neck and back pain treatments. Not only is this effective, but it’s also non-invasive and more affordable compared to the other alternatives.

Sciatica is not an actual disease or health condition in itself. Instead, it’s a term used to describe a cluster of symptoms caused by other conditions stemming from the lower back.

Essentially, sciatica is the name given to the pain experienced after the sciatic nerve is irritated, inflamed or compressed. When this happens, it causes shooting pain on the leg, anywhere from your buttocks to the ankle.

What are the causes of sciatic pain? Here are four things that can cause sciatic pain.

1. Lumbar Bulging Disc or Herniated Disc

The spine has multiple discs that serve several functions, including flexibility, balancing loads placed on the spine and cushioning the vertebrae. Disc bulging and herniation typically occur in the lumbar spine because this is the part that supports the upper body, as well as any weights you might pick up.

When a disc bulges or herniates, it can press against an adjacent nerve root and compress delicate tissue. Depending on the nerve, this might cause sciatica.

This compression can occur on one side of the body, causing sciatic pain on this side or both sides. The latter is known as bilateral sciatic.

2. Spinal Tumors

Spinal tumours are abnormal growth on the spine that can be malignant or benign.

Benign growths in the spine can compress the sciatic nerve. Examples of these include:

Osteoid osteomas: these tend to be small and grow on bone. However, they can cause new bone to form in the affected area or osteoid bone to form around the tumour.

Aneurysmal bone cysts: these are not actual tumours but blood-filled cysts that tend to expand quickly.

Giant cell tumours: aggressive bone tumours that attack bones located close to a joint.

When spinal tumours develop in the lumbar region, there is always the chance of sciatica developing. Fortunately, spinal rumours are very rare, and so is the type of sciatica related to them.

3. Pregnancy

Most pregnancies will come with some aches and pains. Sciatica is among the common discomforts experienced by mothers to be.

During pregnancy, the body releases hormones to make the ligaments in the pelvis and spine more flexible.

This, alongside the bay weight and other changes in the body, can cause sciatica and back pain. The pain can be experienced during the day as you go about normal business or at night, making it difficult to sleep.

The good news is that chiropractic adjustments and massages can help with this pain. It will also often go away after you have the baby.

4. Trauma

Direct trauma from contact sports, motor vehicle accidents, assault and taking a tall can cause sciatica. The impact of any of these events can injure the nerves directly.

Broken bone fragments can also compress the nerves.

There is also traction-induced sciatica that can result from pelvic fractures or dislocations.

Other traumatic events that can cause sciatica include objects penetrating the body and tearing or cutting the nerve. These can be knives or even bullets.