Can a Chiropractor Cure Sciatica?

Lower back pain is one of the most common complaints. Almost everyone experiences it at least once in their lives. If your lower back pain tends to be on one side, or if you feel it in one hip and leg as well, you may be suffering from sciatica. 

What is sciatica?

Shooting pain from your back down your legs may be caused by sciatica. The sciatic nerve is the longest and thickest nerve in your body. It originates in your lower back as a bundle of five nerves, from the lumbar spine and sacrum, which come together to form a left and right sciatic nerve that run down through your hips and the back of your leg to your knee, where they branch into smaller nerves that continue all the way down to your feet. If this nerve is pinched, compressed, or otherwise injured at any point, it can cause pain, weakness, numbness, or tingling in the hip, buttock, legs, or feet. 

Causes of Sciatica

The most common cause of sciatica is a slipped disc that puts pressure on the nerve. It usually only affects one side of the body. It can begin gradually or suddenly, depending on the cause. Aging, diabetes, carrying extra weight, illness, or injury can all increase the probability of experiencing sciatica. Sciatica sometimes occurs during pregnancy, because the hormones that relax ligaments can cause things to shift and may compress that nerve. Most bouts of sciatica heal with time, and pain can be treated with hot and cold packs and over the counter medications. If you experience weakness or paralysis, or lose control of the bladder or bowels, seek advice from your healthcare practitioner at once. 

Acute sciatica is a bout of sciatic pain that can last up to 6-8 weeks. It can resolve more quickly if you can identify the cause and free up the nerve to allow for inflammation to decrease and healing to occur. 

Chronic sciatica occurs when the pain lasts longer than 8 weeks. As sciatic pain can cause difficulties in your day to day life, getting help from your healthcare practitioner to identify the cause of your pain is important if you’re dealing with an ongoing issue. 

Alternating sciatica, which is pain down first one leg and then the other, or bilateral sciatica, which is pain down both legs at once, are both fairly rare and could indicate degenerative disease. If you experience either of these variations, it may be wise to seek the advice of your healthcare practitioner. 

How a Chiropractor can Help with Sciatica

If you’re experiencing pain, a visit to a chiropractor can help you investigate the cause. Chiropractors focus on maintaining the alignment of the spine, and are skilled at finding subluxations, which are places where the vertebrae have shifted and may be compressing or pinching a nerve. 

A visit to your chiropractor can help relieve this compression by aligning the spine, which can help herniated discs settle back into place and relieve pressure on the sciatic nerve. A chiropractor may also be able to offer you a referral to a physical therapist who can teach you exercises to focus on strengthening core and back muscles and maintaining flexibility, or to a massage therapist who can offer trigger point massage to relieve pain and help reduce inflammation, or deep tissue massage to relieve pain and induce relaxation. 

Some chiropractors also offer forms of pain relief such as TENS or PEMF. These can help relieve pain and inflammation and facilitate healing. 

At Natural State Health Center, our integrative medical team includes chiropractors, a physical therapist, a massage therapist, and a nurse practitioner with experience in various forms of regenerative medicine, including PEMF and TENS. By applying their various areas of expertise and knowledge, our team can help you come up with a treatment plan to address your sciatic pain, from investigating the causes to addressing the symptoms.