Sciatica - What should I do?

Question

I started experiencing sciatica pain in my lower back and left leg at the age of 16 which prevented me from doing regular exerise, playing football etc. - very young I'm told to experince this sort of problem. And as a result, after having consulted 2 doctors at the time to try and diagnose the specific problem, I was sent to a hospital for an X-RAY, and to a chiropractor to see exactly if there was any sort of problem.

I was told by both the doctors and chiropractic that the base of my spine was somewhat compounded and the discs were close together which could be causing the pain.

As with all chiropractors, I was given a strict routine of exercises to follow in the hope it would eradicate the problem, but I'm 21 years old now, and although it is often OK, I still experince seriously painful days or weeks where it won't go away and prevents me almost walking, let alone training or doing anything.

Because of my age, I felt I perhaps was'nt taken as seriously as somebody with similar problems if they'd been middle-aged, but I now have no idea what to do. I was disheartened by the lack of help I was given and that the doctors did not recognise the severity of the problem hence why i have not returned.

Do I continue with exercise as best I can and just learn to live with it, or is this something that can be fixed with surgery. I find it difficult to see how any doctor of chiropractic can irradicate pain completely if the discs are compounded. I don't particually wan't to have to do those silly exercises every day for the rest of my life, so what are my options?

Answer 1

Get a MRI and then see what that reveals. X-rays will only show bone and gaps between bones, while you need to see if the discs have been damaged, or if they are touching the nerve roots. Best of Luck

Answer 2

I have the exact same problem. I'm a young dancer and have had a really hard time with my career because of it.

Physical therapy can only help so much. I've done loads of it and really...minimal improvement. The best excercise there is to do for that is to lay on your side, elbow proping you up with your knees at a 90degree angle. Then do sideways hip-ups. It strengthens the supporting muscles around your ilia-sacral joint and keeps it a little more open.

But honestly the most amazing thing that made me go back to classes was having acupuncture and acupressure sessions with this Korean woman at my local Historic YMCA. I know it sounds cornball and I'm a huge skeptic about the whole energy body healing idea, but it worked.

This was also the most painful session of my life however. She calmed me down with acupuncture (which I had never had) then began to dig into my middle and upper back with her elbows and hands. Come to think of it, she spent most of her time on my upper back, and very little on my lower back. Something about how our energy transfers from upper to lower really affects our lower backs and sciatic. That night i went home, drank lots of water and slept. The morning after, I woke up to birds chirping like I was in some kind of Disney movie and I could move. I was a little sore from where she worked on me, but the pain in my back was gone and I got my mobility back. It was the most amazing thing.

Don't be afraid to try new things, but be careful of WHEN you try new things. Make sure you don't have anything really important to do the day after in case it doesn't work as well as you'd planned.