Chiropractic Treatment for Sciatica

Sciatica?  Sciatica is the term given to pain that radiates along the sciatic nerve pathway. The sciatic nerve starts in the lumbar spine, goes to the top of the buttocks, down through the pelvis, and then posterior down each of the legs to the feet.  People usually only have sciatic pain down one leg at a time.  The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve of the body, about the size of your thumb, and it functions to connect the spinal cord to the leg and foot.  The staff at Twisted Spine & Joint has helped many people with this condition and can help you.

Typically, people who have sciatic pain suffer from misalignment of the pelvis, herniated disk, have osteophytes or bone spurs causing inflammation and pain, muscle dysfunction, tumors, infection, or injury to the lumbar spine.  This causes lumbar pain (lumbago), hip pain, leg pain, foot pain, and buttock pain.  Symptoms of sciatica include:  burning along the back of the leg, numbness of the leg &/or foot, cramping of the leg &/or foot, or tingling/paresthesia of the leg &/or foot.  Pain can increase with walking, sitting, driving, sit to stand motion, laying on affected side, bending, and standing too long in one place.

Misalignment or "subluxation" of the pelvis and lumbar spine can be present for years.  Three things cause pain:  1) change in position of a joint;  2) degeneration over time;  and 3) inflammation or muscle spasms.  Sciatica can occur suddenly due to injury, but it can also be due to an old or existing problem.  When different joints or levels of the spine are not moving smoothly, the nerves can become irritated due to inflammation and muscle spasms.  Previous injuries accumulate over our lives and conservative care should be the first choice when treating sciatic pain.   

Sciatica can be diagnosed with a proper medical history and physical examination.  Orthopedic tests are performed by a trained health professional to diagnose sciatica.  X-rays can be used to identify the cause, and sometimes advanced studies, such as lumbar MRI or CT scans are necessary. 

Conservative care is the first choice when treating sciatic pain.  Chiropractors treat sciatica with a series of prescribed adjustments, physical therapy to reduce muscle spasms, core exercises to balance the pelvis and back, stretching exercises to improve muscle balance and to improve spinal health.  If necessary, referrals are made for pain medication, anti-inflammatory medications, and even surgical procedures as a last resort. 



 

Evidence Based Practice

The most important aspects in healthcare contains two important objectives, to get the patient better as quick as possible and to do it in the most cost effective way. How do we achieve these objects, while it seems difficult to do, it is actually quit the opposite. There is a large research base in this country and studies are being concluded each day. If you practice in a certain niche simply read all the possible studies in your field. If research is published that says a certain produced is better than the old one, implement the new one. If new research says a certain produce is no longer effective, stop doing it. This ebb and flow of eliminating and adding procedures should be happening on a a continual basis.

Unfortunately, this is not what is happening, despite the large amount of research in this country. There are certain procedures that have absolutely no evidence that it's therapeutic, but it's still being implemented in ever day practice. Another startling fact is that it take about ten years to implement new research in practical use, but what is even worst is that it take nearly twenty years to eliminate a procedure that has been deemed ineffective. So this mean twenty more years of insurance reimbursements and harmful medical invention.
Reading of the recent current literature is paramount in providing your patient with the best possible outcomes. At Twisted Spine and Joint Center, we implement the current literature up to date to get our patients better as quick as possible.    

Your Plano Chiropractor's Deep Thoughts.

From time to time in our Frisco Chiropractic office, Twisted Spine and Joint Center, we are allow to reflect. We reflect on why we are chiropractors and why we decided to help people get better and stay well. I was talking to my colleague simply about the trend of medicine, on how medicine has been wrong about lower back pain for awhile. First they wanted to operated on the discs which is a failed methodology, it has been determined at only one in one hundred disc herniations need surgery yet back surgeries continue to rise and has brought upon a new diagnosis called failed back surgery syndrome. See back surgery failure rate is so high there is actually a term for it. There has been numerous studies that also show fusion surgeries are not needed in approximately seventy percent of the cases and you risk death every time you're under the knife.

There has also been recent scandals in device companies paying doctors to write bogus research journals to say how there products work and are the best. One doctor in particular made around $8.5 million dollars for a few years of work. The main problem with this is that other doctors see the research and based their treatment recommendation off these journals, this is the biggest ethical dilemma plaguing medicine, almost as big as the American Medical Associate taking money from tobacco companies to endorse tobacco as having "therapeutic effects". Recently it has show that it roughly takes fifteen years for a therapy to reach mainstream after the research shows it is effective. What is terribly wrong is that it take forty-four year for a therapy to be eliminated from mainstream after it has been deemed ineffective or harmful.

Sadly to say with medicine you never know what's going to be helpful and what's going to harm you. Think about spinal fusions they have been shown for the most part to be ineffective but they will still be doing them for the next forty years. What medication in the near future will be label harmful or cause disastrous effects? You should choose to do the safest and most natural less invasive treatment first as it is the lowest risk and work your way up the medicine hierarchy to riskier treatment option as lower risk treatments are ineffective. This is where chiropractic comes into play natural safe healthcare without the harmful effects since chiropractic care is the safest healthcare on the planet. If you have musculoskeletal problem chiropractors should be your first treatment option of choice.