Sciatica Is Never Getting Better If You Miss This

Sciatica is no joke, it can be terribly painful and drive you to dark places. Understandably there are lots of well meaning individuals online and in person trying to help you recover from sciatica and stop the pain. But for so many offering these sciatica relief stretches or movements the point is missed completely. For those of you who just want the punchline, Sciatica is the symptom, not the cause, and if you keep trying to provide relief for the symptoms of sciatic pain, you’re going to perpetually be trying to “take pressure off the nerve” using funny positions and peculiar “hacks” that only serve as distraction at best, and at worse make the issue worse. 

Now we’ve got that out the way and you know the punch line, well spend the rest of the article explaining things in a little more detail.

Sciatic nerve pain focus – the mistake

The focus on the sciatic nerve pain and endless conversations lead people to focusing on the nerve pain rather than the cause of the nerve pain which is a recipe for disaster. Because if you’re focusing on the most superficial problem, you’re missing the bigger picture. This is like if you’re in the kitchen and the smoke alarm is going off. All those special stretches and hacks for sciatica, are like taking the batteries out of the smoke alarm and thinking everything is ok. While you’re messing around on a stool trying to take the batteries out, with the ringing in your ears, the fire in the pan on the stove is just growing and growing. Often the sciatica relief strategies are akin to taking the batteries out and just sitting at the kitchen table with a sigh of relief that that horrible noise has stopped. 

The movements that relief sciatica – TEMPORARILY

For most there is very rarely a direct COMPRESSION or squashing of the nerves by a herniated disc, against the wall of the exit foramina – the space where the nerves come out of the spine, before they form the sciatic nerve. The vast majority have some degree of injury to the segment and then a perfectly natural and normal inflammatory reaction. The problem is that this build up of inflammation in a confined bony space creates pressure. We discussed the release valve in an episode on sitting with sciatica so check that out later.  

This pressure is what irritates the nerve roots and results in the pain that goes down your sciatic nerve.

So what is the simple solution that movements like knee hugs, childs pose, sciatic flossing, bending in a strange way off the bed or sofa, have in common? They open the hole, in doing so, the pressure goes down, and relief in this position often results. 

This is because you dealt with the problem of pressure, which is “a problem” that so many mistake for “the problem” that is responsible for your sciatica. 

The cause of sciatica

At its root something must have caused the inflammation outlined above. It is the injury to that segment of the spine, the L4, L5 or L5, S1 segment of the lumbar spine. This most commonly involves the disc and the mode of injury was usually either a load bearing position or more commonly a load bearing position with forward bending to some degree. Whether or not this is explicitly touching the nerve the injury drives inflammation and as we mentioned above this creates the problem so many mistake for the cause. 

Why those stretches make sciatica worse

Fundamentally your spine has failed into a forward bending position damaging the discs and surrounding ligaments that stabilise the segment of your spine. Just like a cut on your arm where two sides of the wound have opened to leave a gap that needs to be knitted back together, your spinal segment has been damaged and in the short term it needs to tighten back up again. Repeatedly opening out the wound by stretching in a forward bending fashion is only serving to ensure this does not go through a good healing process, and if it does we are often left with a degree of instability, waiting tentatively for the next flare up caused by some insignificant even like putting on your socks. 

Fix sciatica the right way

Injured joints need support and protection, not more wiggling. Instead of adding more bending, focus on exercises that teach spine stability to restore health, gently reintroduce loading over time to test and rebuild the health of the low back and make sure you apply these skills of spine control to your daily life. We discussed 5 great exercises that everyone can start immediately in the episode on the core 5 for spine health, so check that out next if you need some guidance on what to do to actually target the injury! This will help you avoid months or more going by doing the same misguided stretches only to find that you are still just as vulnerable as you were at the start, if not more!

And of course if you need more help, you can always check out the program to help you take out the guess work, and get the support you need to help you through the process.