Sciatica occurs due to a variety of reasons. It can happen due to Herniation of the Spinal Disc, Piriformis Syndrome, Spinal Stenosis, Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction and even Pregnancy.
It is characterized by following symptoms:
- Pain usually in one side of buttock or leg
- Difficulty moving the leg or foot
- Difficult to bend, stand up or to walk
- Leg pain as as burning, tingling or searing
Although symptoms can be painfull just in rear case nerve damage occurs
Here are some tips that can help you relief the pain
- Wear a Chiropractic or SI belt. It lifts your bump off your SI nerve
- Go to Physical therapy. You will feel such an amazing amount of relief
- Start getting adjustments at the Chiropractor . If you’e never been to a chiropractor before, just know they are not all equal. Read reviews and find one your are comfortable with.
- Minimize sitting as much as possible. Especially on hard surfaces.
- Butt massages. If you can’t get one, get a tennis ball, sit on it, and roll with all your weight on the trouble spots
- Warm baths, sometimes really helps more than just a regular bath.
- Lay flat on your back and have a helper raise 1 leg straight up slowly. Go as high as you can without sciatic pain. The idea is to stretch the hamstings well. Breathe really slow and deep and relax all teh way, 100%. If you have any muscle tension in your butt or back drop your leg a bit till you can relax 100%. Do this 2-3 times each leg. Always go as high as you can while 100% relaxed. Sometimes it helps to tense your abs if you feel sciatic pain.
- Do a Piriformis stretch. There are many of these, look some up and see which one you can reasonably do. Lay on back, both knees bent. Put heel of 1 foot on opposite knee. Then slowly pull that raised knee towards your chest. You should feel a stretch right in the side of your butt. Again, breathe slow and deep. Do this 2-3 times a day.
- Stretch hug your knees to your chest
When doing stretches here is your rule of thumb. Breathe deep in and pull the stretch deeper as you breathe out. When you breathe in again, feel your spine expand with the breath instead of feeling like your breath is trapped by whatever body part is pushing against your stomach in the stretch.
Some people recommend following Chinese technique
The massage technique: the basic idea is to massage an area (called the “sciatica reaction point“) located on your back under your shoulder (about 4 inches down from the top of your shoulder) opposite from the leg in which you are experiencing sciatica. So if you have sciatica in your right leg, you would massage this area under your left shoulder. Massage this point lightly/moderately in a very small circular motion for about 8 minutes a day for a week. For me, after 2-3 days I noticed a large reduction in my sciatica pain.
To find the point, have someone stand behind you and have them place their fingers on your shoulder, and have them massage their thumb around the area on your back about 4 inches down from your shoulder. The sciatica reaction point should feel a bit painful/uncomfortable/achy when they massage it – that’s when you know you’ve hit the right spot. This is the point that you have to massage. For me (left shoulder, because I had sciatica in my right leg), the spot was just to the right of my shoulder blade bone, about 4 inches down from my left shoulder. You can also find and massage this point by yourself, although in my experience it works better if someone else does it.
It’s very important that you massage the correct area – the materials say that if you’re even an inch off, it won’t work. So when you find the point, massage it in a tight circular area so that you stay on the point. As for the intensity of the massage, you should probably feel some light discomfort during the massage, but you should not be in a lot of pain.
Some doctors recommend following exercises as extremely helpful:
