Sciatica & Nerve Impingement

While many people know that chiropractic treatments can be used to treat skeletal and muscular issues, some people don’t realise that your chiropractor can also help with many issues associated with the nerves in your body. This is because many nerve issues, such as sciatica and pinched nerves, are actually the result of nerves being compressed between the muscles and the joints in the body.

Sciatica

Sciatica is the inflammation of your sciatic nerve, which runs from your lower back down your legs and feet. Sciatica can cause numbness, pins and needles, weakness or referred pain down the back of your legs that may or may not go down past your knees. Sciatica can be caused by compression of the nerve at different points. For example, where the nerve exits your lower spine or where the nerve crosses your piriformis muscle (in the gluteal region). 
Left untreated, it will change the way you walk, causing chronic compensations and problems in other parts of your body.

There are some standout symptoms of sciatica, which include:

• Lower back and leg pain that increase when you are immobile;
• Legs experiencing a sense of burning or throbbing;
• Restricted movement in the lower limbs and feet;
• Consistent pain on one side of your lower back;
• An intense pain when trying to stand.

To treat sciatica, your chiropractor will first assess you to diagnose the possible causes. (of your sciatica - remove). He or she will then perform adjustments to relieve pressure on the nerve. We may also use hot and cold treatments and suggest exercises or changes to your habits and posture to permanently correct the issue.

Pinched Nerve

A pinched nerve is when there is too much pressure applied to a nerve by surrounding tissue such as bone, disc, cartilage, muscle or tendon. This is usually classified as the nerve being pinched, impinged, entrapped or compressed. It can be experienced as numbness, tingling, pins and needles, weakness or a burning sensation that can radiate elsewhere.  

If left untreated, the signals the nerve is sending will change leading to many problems (depending on what that nerve controls) and also to postural compensations (your body may lean to one side, for example) which then compounds over time.

At Back Up Clinic, we pinpoint where the nerve is affected, what is contributing to that and then unload the pressure.