Thousands of people around the world suffer from sciatica, a leading cause of leg pain that often feels like an awful cramp. Sciatica can lead to excruciating aches that can make standing, sitting, and many other day to day activities impossible for those that suffer from this condition. Sciatica is caused by the sciatic nerve becoming severely inflamed, either rapidly or gradually, in any person. The pain begins in the legs, thighs, ankles, feet, and toes, but often can transfer to the hips, or even up the back and spinal cord. This condition is the cause of many individuals losing their ability to live a normal life. The neurological damage inflicted can also be a factor in other severe conditions, including concussions, depression, and movement disorders that can wreak havoc on everyday life. The first place to start is to gather as much information about the back and how it works. Watching informative lectures is a great place to start, and you can find some of the best lectures online.

 

 

Most often, when care of sciatica is brought up, the first treatment people consider is surgery. While it is true that many patients with this disorder do go through surgery, at least 90% of sciatica patients are able to recover without surgical needs. Medicine, physical therapy, and spinal injections are all alternative options that can aid patients free their bodies of this terrible pain forever.

 

 

The medicines often prescribed for this disorder usually consist of anti-inflammatory drugs paired with painkillers. Many over the counter drugs happen to fall under this category, and quite often patients are prescribed something easy to find that is cheap and easy to obtain and take. Sometimes, this is all a person needs. Other times, muscle relaxants or prescription painkillers may be given depending on the level of pain experienced. Physical therapy is another treatment that many sciatica sufferers choose. The goal here is to work the muscles into relaxing themselves and practice exercise movements that gradually reduce the pressure on the nerve to relieve the leading cause of this pain in the first place. Programs often include having patients walk, swim, or work on flexibility to both use and remedy the affected muscles and repair the area. The final non-surgical treatment is a course of spinal injections, which are often simple injections of an anti-inflammatory medication or serum designed to relax muscles.

 

 

 

Not all patients, however, are able to respond completely to the above treatments and sometimes surgery must be taken into consideration. There are two main methods of surgical treatment, which include Microdiscectomy which removes troubling fragments of a herniated disk, and Laminectomy, which removes the bone curved around the spinal cord that often presses muscle and tissue onto the nerve. Both are easy, safe, and regularly performed. However, as with any surgery, there are always risks. If you are suffering from sciatica and are looking for a way to relieve the pain without going to drastic measures, your best bet is to find a back pain specialist from an experienced clinic, such as Broadview Spine & Health Centre (visit them at http://stopmypain.info), who can offer you non-surgical treatments that have been proven to provide results.