What is sciatica?
Sciatica refers to a combination of painful symptoms that occur in your lower back and travel along your sciatic nerve, causing numbness, weakness, or tingling pain down your leg.
The sciatic nerve is your body’s largest nerve. It’s made up of individual nerve roots that originate in your lower back and then branch out down your legs. Sciatica might point to an underlying condition, such as a herniated disc or spinal stenosis.
What are the symptoms of sciatica?
You feel the symptoms of sciatica when your sciatic nerve is irritated close to its point of origin.
Sciatica typically involves one or more of the following symptoms:
- Recurring pain in one side of your buttock or leg
- Pain that intensifies when you sit
- Burning, tingling, or searing leg pain
- Difficulty moving your leg, foot, or toes
- Difficulty standing up or walking
- Pain that reaches down your leg and possibly into your foot and toes
Sciatica symptoms can vary from infrequent and mildly irritating to incessant and debilitating.
What causes sciatica?
When your sciatic nerve is pinched, sciatica symptoms occur. Some common causes of sciatica include:
- Herniated discs
- Spinal stenosis
- Bone spurs
- Compression by a tumor
- Complications from diseases (such as diabetes)
These conditions can irritate your sciatic nerve, resulting in painful symptoms.
How do you treat sciatica?
Your physician at Glaser Pain Relief Center first performs a comprehensive physical exam. It’s essential for them to be familiar with your symptoms and to fully understand your situation to make a proper diagnosis and treatment plan.
After making a diagnosis, Glaser Pain Relief Center offers an array of innovative treatment options to relieve your pain.
The team may recommend a combination of treatments, including:
- Lifestyle modifications
- Physical therapy
- Prescribed pain medication
- Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) therapy
- Epidural steroid injections
- Vertiflex procedure
Glaser Pain Relief Center offers spinal cord stimulation treatments to address sciatica pain. The Proclaim™ XR SCS system by Abbott offers superior pain relief with its BurstDR™ stimulation therapy, delivering stimulation patterns that mimic natural firing patterns in the brain. The team can program the correct stimulation dosage based on your individual needs.
Call or book an appointment online today to set up an initial consultation with the team at Glaser Pain Relief Center to develop a customized treatment plan for your sciatica pain.
