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Ask A Posture Pro| Sciatica Pain Sucks! How to Break the Pain Cycle

Sciatica Pain Sucks!  

Anyone who's ever experienced the pain of sciatica can attest to how severe and debilitating it can be.

Symptoms of SCIATICA PAIN Include:

• Radiating pain down your back, buttocks and leg
• Burning or numbness, traveling part way down the back of the leg and sometimes all the way to the foot
• Pain in the lower back, buttock, and/or various parts of the leg and foot
• Muscular weakness, pins and needles or tingling and difficulty in moving or controlling the leg
• Pain on one side of the buttock or in one leg that is worse when sitting
  
• Typically, the symptoms are only felt on one side of the body

MedicineNet defines Sciatica as "Pain resulting from irritation of the sciatic nerve, typically felt from the low back to behind the thigh and radiating down below the knee."

Causes of Sciatica:

• a herniated disc pressing one or all of the 5 lumbar nerve chains
• inflammation or irritation of a nerve at the spine, sacrum or hip
• irritation of the nerve from adjacent bone, muscle, or tumor(s)
• internal bleeding, infections, injury, 
  
• pregnancy

If you've been trying with limited to no success to resolve sciatica pain, perhaps it's time to re-think the pain problem.  Maybe your pain has more to do with your posture than your symptom.

At Pain Free Posture MN, my job as a Certified Posture Alginment Specialist is to ask the bigger questions.  

1. WHY did the sciatica happen in the first place?  
2. WHAT is the root cause of your symptomatic pain?

Perhaps the symtpoms of fire, burning, numbness and/or tingling you feel in you leg has more to do with your overall posture and how your joints are positioned than it does with the nerve irritation and/or impingment.

I guarantee you that if you've been treating chronic sciatica pain with limited to no success, the big picture has been completely missed.  

If you do not successfuly resolve WHY the herniation or inflammation OCCURRED IN THE FIRST PLACE, then you are at best, temporarily taming the fire.  Without addressing the postural imbalances at the load joints causing the herniation or disparity at the lumbar spine, the coals still burn deep underneath.  It only takes the slightest spark to cause the flames to rage once again.

Remember, the definition of sciatica is pain resulting from disc herniation, nerve impingement or irritation of a nerve.  It's not uncommon to see a postural deviation in the hips among other postural imbalances when diagnosed with sciatica.    

As you can see in the photo, this woman has an elevated hip.  When the hip and back muscles are imbalanced, the body is susceptible to a variety of pain/injuries (such as knee strains, fallen arches of the feet, neck or low back pain), of which sciatica is one of the worse. And while rest, medication or generalized stretching may provide short-term relief, the long-term solution involves correcting the imbalance at the root of the problem.

 If you are looking for a NATURAL PAIN RELIEF ALTERNATIVE why not try something new.  

1. Take a look at your overall posture and hip position.  
2. Is one side sitting higher than another? 
3. Does one hip pointer sit more forward or back of the other?  

Sciatica pain may certainly be coming from your backside.When you see imbalances at the joints is easy to see how a nerve can become impinged or irritated. 

However, the underlying ROOT CAUSE of your pain is stemming from the lack of symmetrical function between the hips. As founder of the Egoscue Method, Pete Egoscue likes to say, "The body works as a unit and must be treated as such".

This explains why sciatica sufferers are often caught in the chronic-pain cycle.  

You may temporarity resolve the pain through massage, chiropractic, cortisone and NSAIDS for a time.  If you symptomatically treat the pain but do not address the postural imbalances, the pain will unfortunately come back again.

The best approach is to use a corrective exercise program like Postural Therapy.  We are trained to eliminate the postural imbalances.

At Pain Free Posture MN we will analyzye your posture and evaluate your movements to find the best corrective exercises to eliminate your sciatica pain stemming from postural imbalances. What have you got to lose except a big pain in the butt?  

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At Pain Free Posture MN, we believe in living life to the fullest!  Your life should be PAIN FREE - fun, full of energy, and uniquely about you.

If it doesn't feel that way for you, give me a call.  

Posture Alignment Therapy can help you resolve your musculoskeletal pain naturally without medication, manipulation or surgery.

If you don't know what to do, don't worry.  I can help you get going again.  I promise.  We're in this together, and I am here to help.  

Balance the Body.  Relieve the Pain.