Sciatica

[swilow]

Anyone else suffer from this? For me, I have it on the "mild" side according to doctor- doesn't feel mild, that's for sure. All on the right side of my body (though creeping left), burning in lower right of back above hips, down through hips/groin, inner right leg, around the knee, burning shins/calves, numb/burning/cold foot, sore ankles. On bad days, I start getting nerve pain up my back towards my shoulder, down my arm/wrist/fingers. Side note, but I have mild epilepsy and likely sensitised my nervous system through use of anticonvulsants when I was younger. I get migraines with some frequency, and get nerve pain throughout my body. I've had trigeminal neuralgia, and regularly have inflamed/sensitive nerves in my face. Currently, I have electric shock sensations in my fingertips whcih is only noticeable when typing. It seems my nerves are shot!

The sciatica is especially evident if I sit for too long; standing and walking and exercising don't seem to represent a problem.

Anyway, I'm prescribed a bit of stuff for this. Pregabalin 300mg daily which I am hesitant to take due to past addiction to GABAergic type drugs (hence I take it every few days during bad periods), tramadol of which I've never had my script filled due to opiate addiction. Pregabalin helps but opiates don't do much; I am a regular user of codeine and it doesn't do much but take the edge of*. Anti-inflammatories do very little though I take curcumin for antioxidant and anti-inflam purposes and it 'might' be helpful.

*I have considered that nerve pain was a very common symptom of opiate withdrawal for me so I wonder if constant cycling in and out of daily codeine use is lowering my pain threshold or simply disabling my natural endorphin system.

What has really helped has been yoga stretches, very regular walking, adjusting my sitting posture and strengthening my core.

I am wondering if anyone else experiencing such a thing has any tricks they've come up with to combat the symptoms, preferably non pharamaceutical but anything is of interest.

 

[Foreigner]

I've had back problems my whole life. Been in over 10 car accidents (all as a passenger) since the age of 6, and I have scoliosis. It depends on your exact situation. I had a lot of scar tissue around my spine that modern medicine said was irreparable. What I've since learned is that modern medicine doesn't know very much, even though they behave otherwise.

The first thing I learned from my massage therapist was to put castor oil packs on my back every night. (You can Google it.) I did it religiously for 6 months. The castor oil softens scarring. Then my massage therapist worked many hours to sort the scarring out. After the scars were gone or at least a lot more pliable, I started seeing a chiropractor to readjust the alignment.

I have always had hip and S.I. problems, mostly because of sitting in chairs most of my life. It creates a pelvic tilt going forward, which shortens your hamstrings and lengthens your quads. When you stand up, the pelvic tilt persists. Your spine has natural curves in the lumbar and the upper thoracic, but when there's a pelvic tilt the curves straighten or shift locations. When this happens, over a long period, the discs begin to bulge and compress nerve roots. Posture is so important.

What has helped me the most is learning laban movement analysis, feldenkrais work, and the alexander technique. I'm not qualified to teach but I've taken many classes to help myself. My original approach was to do weight lifting and intense stretching. What I've since learned is that the body actually only needs very light touch and specific movements to trigger total re-alignment. For instance, I used to see a chiropractor who used a drop table that simulates impacts. Now I see a feldenkrais worker who puts soft pressure on the body in specific ways that causes major shifts. So you may want to look into that.

For S.I. stuff, I find laying on the floor and doing pelvic rocking, either on my back or on my front, helps loosen things. I'll take a tennis ball or a small spiky exercise ball and gently roll it all around my pelvis, front and back. Getting a roller for muscles that has spikes on it can also help. If you lookup a diagram of what the SI joint looks like, you can roll the spiky ball around the joint areas. You can also sit on the ball, putting it right on your taint (between balls and anus) and also between tailbone and anus. Roll it back and forth between there. This technique opens your pelvic floor so that your SI joint can drop down.

If you're getting shooting sciatic pains then it means either a disc has shifted and is compressing the nerve or your pelvic tilt is severe enough that the sciatic nerve is losing blood flow. The spinal nerves that innervate the legs move through small holes in the pelvis and if the pelvis is chronically tilted forward then there will be nerve compression. If the L4-L5 disc is slipping, it may be possible to move it back into place with this kind of work. If it's really fucked then I'm not sure. If the disc isn't involved but it's more because of pelvic tilt, then that's totally correctable.

I highly, highly recommend you go see an osteopath... usually a Doctor of Osteopathy. Most people haven't heard of them and most MDs think they are woo woo (like they do with everything but their own field), but my life was changed by one. They make minor adjustments of the bones, starting in the skull and the face, and then work their way town. Trigeminal neuralgia is universally a problem with the skull, neck and face bones being misaligned. If I had the money and the time, I would go back to school and be an osteo. The work they do is fucking incredible.