Sciatica?
All day long, every day, for 29 years, is how often I’ve treated this scourge of humanity. Many people come to me, or call me, diagnosing themselves with sciatica. And they are usually right. It’s such a common problem that many people know what it is. It is named for the sciatic nerve, the body’s largest nerve. It is comprised of 5 nerves roots in the lower back and sacrum (L4-S3). These nerve roots, coming from the spine, coalesce in the buttock region and then continue down the leg to the foot. As the nerve descends down the leg, nerve branches disperse to innervate muscles, skin, blood vessels, and other tissues.
The sciatic nerve supplies tissues in the back of the buttock and thigh, the back and outside of the leg, and the bottom and outside of the foot. If you have pain in this region, the sciatic region, you have sciatica. The common cause of such pain is a disc herniation in the lower back, which pinches one of the nerves roots which contribute to the sciatic nerve, i.e. L4, L5, S1, S2 or S3.
This pain will persist until you get the disc herniation off of the sciatic nerve root. This requires a physical movement of the disc off of the nerve root. Only getting the pressure of the disc off of the nerve root will relieve the pain. Sometimes anti-inflammatory medication will help, because it will sometimes reduce the inflammatory consequence of the pressure on the nerve root. But medications will not take pressure off the nerve root, so they won’t resolve the problem.
Unfortunately, most treatments for this problem involve having patients do exercises, which makes no sense. The most effective treatment you can provide for patients, without surgery, is to pull the vertebrae apart, to encourage the disc material to get off of the nerve root, and reduce the pain. That is my specialty, using a relatively new, uncommon treatment, called spinal decompression. This requires a very specialized table that few clinics have.
Unfortunately, most clinics just won’t invest the money in a specialized table for spinal pain. This is driven by financial considerations, not medical considerations. I can tell you after 29 years in clinical practice, including 18 years in orthopedics, physical medicine, physical therapy, and 4 years part-time, in neurosurgery, this specialized table is the most effective treatment for sciatica, that I have found, by a very large margin.
If I can help you, please call 404-558-4015.