Sciatic pain

The sciatic nerve is a large nerve that runs from your lower back through your buttocks to your legs and it can get irritated at any point along the way creating sensations that can travel part or all the way from the back to the feet. It can be accompanied by back, hip and knee pain. It¹s rather unpleasant! The trick is to find out where the irritation is occurring, usually the lower back or the buttocks. Thankfully it is most commonly from the buttocks and this is the easiest to deal with and resolve.

When we first see you in clinic we will take a history as to how you think the sciatic pain started as well as other medical history. We will then look at your posture and assess your skeletal balance – particularly looking at how level your pelvis is and how well the vertebra in your lower back are moving. We will also feel for excess muscle tension to the lower back and the buttocks.

Treatment will consist of gentle rocking of the pelvis to rebalance it, mobilisation of the whole so each vertebra is moving well and if required some soft tissue work to relax the muscles of the lower back and buttocks.

Most people have very quick improvement to the symptoms, usually within 2 days but often quicker than that! The trick is to then stop it happening again and on subsequent treatments we will give you help and advice for long term prevention.

However, disc injury can also cause sciatic pain. It can be called a slipped or prolapsed disc. What happens is the disc protrudes from between the vertebrae and irritates the nerve root sending symptoms down the sciatic nerve. This can take a little longer to resolve but essentially the above will form a basis for your treatment and a lot of relief from symptoms can be had using both chiropractic and massage as a complementary treatment plan. It is also beneficial long term along side rehabilitation exercises to stabilise the affected area, this is because we are addressing the underlying cause as well as the painful symptoms.

If you would like to discuss your particular symptoms before commencing treatment please feel free to give us a ring.