Sciatica Exercises are an important part of successful Sciatica Treatment, but it is necessary to determine the most likely cause(s) of your condition in order to know which exercises are most likely to benefit you (and not make things worse).
If you've been looking online for sciatica exercises and other home sciatica treatment methods for any time at all, you've no doubt come across several people selling their "One and Only Cure" for sciatica. In most cases, these individuals are probably well-intentioned, but may not have the training and experience to really understand the "big picture" of sciatica treatment.
Most of the people promoting sciatica exercises and treatment information are not health care professionals. Usually they are people who suffered from sciatica for months or even years and may have tried numerous treatments before they found the one thing that helped them. This leads to a skewed perspective in that they think that everything besides their sciatica exercise or other treatment is worthless and that their method is the only thing that ever works.
The reality is that sciatica and sciatica-like symptoms are caused by different things in different people. When an individual finds an exercise or treatment that helps their sciatica when nothing else did, it's certainly understandable that they might think they had found a uniquely effective sciatica treatment. What they fail to realize though is that no treatment works for everyone, and their "One and Only Cure" may not work as well for another person - and might even make some people worse!
I'm Dr. George Best, D.C., and I've treated hundreds of sciatica cases in my office over the past 20 years and have consulted with hundreds of additional sciatica sufferers all over the world via this website. I can tell you with total confidence that the vast majority of sciatica sufferers can recover and can do so without surgery. In my 20 years of clinical experience, I've seen first hand what sciatica exercises are effective under what conditions, and there's and excellent chance I can help you find the sciatica exercises and treatment methods that will help you recover quickly as well as help prevent future problems.
Sciatica Exercises don't have to be complicated or difficult to do. In fact one exercise that is extremely effective in many sciatica cases is so simple and easy that when I show my patients what to do, they often ask, "Is that it?".
The trickiest part is figuring out what the cause of your sciatica is, so you can then use the appropriate exercises and treatments to best address that particular cause. The video above discusses the two most common general causes of sciatica: nerve compression and muscular contraction.
The vast majority of sciatica exercises and treatments you'll find online are designed to help with one or more kinds of muscular contraction sciatica. Although some of the methods I've seen online are better than others, there's nothing wrong with using treatments for sciatica symptoms related to muscular contraction, unless...
You have nerve compression and the recommended exercises will tend to make the nerve compression worse!
For example, one exercise I commonly see recommended for sciatica is the yoga position, "downward facing dog". This exercise is usually helpful for releasing tightness in the buttock and hamstring muscles, which will tend to reduce sciatica-like symptoms caused by these muscles. The problem is, the forward bending of the spine will tend to make any bulging discs in the lower back bulge even more, resulting in increased nerve compression and an increase in sciatica symptoms!
Getting The Right Sciatica Exercises & Treatments For You Depends On Figuring Out The Cause(s) Of Your Sciatica!
So, how do you figure out the cause of your sciatica? Well, some clues can be found in the history of how your sciatica symptoms developed.
Nerve compression sciatica is most often caused by some type of injury to one or more of the discs (the soft-tissue "shock-absorbers" between the spinal bones), and related inflammation. This type of problem is often a result of a trauma, such as a fall or a car accident, or from heavy and/or repetetive lifting. In some cases, disc problems arise as a result of long periods of sitting, particularly in a slouched position.
The bulging disc along with inflammatory swelling narrows the space around the nerves, causing compression and irritation. If you have sciatica caused by this type of problem, muscle-based sciatica exercises will not help you, and may further irritate the nerves!
Nerve compression sciatica often (but not always) improves when you lie down, but gets worse very quickly upon rising.
Another indicator of nerve compression sciatica, particularly in more severe cases is a sideways shift of the upper body on the lower body as shown below:
There is also a simple test for nerve compression sciatica which is done sitting. Sit up straight in a chair and straighten out the leg on the side you have symptoms on, with your toes pointing up as shown below:
An increase in your symptoms is a indicator that you probably do have some nerve compression occurring. If this is the case, you want to focus on sciatica exercises and treatments that help with nerve compression symptoms first. You may need to use muscle-contraction-based sciatica exercises too at some point, but as long as you have actual nerve compression and irritation, it will be very difficult to effectively reduce muscle tension and contraction, so you have to get the nerves settled down first.
If you don't have any problems with the leg extension test, your symptoms are most likely muscular. The most common muscle involved in sciatica symptoms is the piriformis, which is a muscle located in the buttock area. To test the piriformis, pull your knee toward your opposite shoulder as shown below:
Test the piriformis muscle on both sides as shown above. If you have tightness and/or pain when performing this test, there's a good chance that the piriformis is involved in your sciatica symptoms, and it you will probably benefit from sciatica exercises and other treatments aimed at reducing muscle contraction.
Hopefully you now have a better idea of the cause of your sciatica symptoms, so the next step is to start some basic sciatica exercises and home treatments to start getting relief. To move on to the next page, simply enter your email in the box at the top of this page and we'll get started.
