We continue our education series blog posts today with Dr. Fernandez breaking down exactly what is the sciatic nerve, what it looks like, and how you can fix it. This is part of our continuing public service designed to educate the general public about how and why Americans increasingly include chiropractic treatment in their pain management care plan. Dr. Fernandez owns and operates Life Chiropractic and Acupuncture serving Newark, North Bergen, and the surrounding areas.
Today, after Dr. Hernandez describes exactly what the sciatic nerve is, he’s going to explain to you the most common ways that people injure the sciatic nerve. He’ll follow that with a discussion about how chiropractic services combined with postural correction services offers a non-surgical solution to virtually every form of sciatic pain. Of course we welcome any and all of your questions regarding the treatment of sciatic pain, or for that matter, or neck, spine, or foot pain that robs you of a pain free quality of life.
Now, on to Dr. Hernandez’s video.
Alright, good morning everyone! Dr. Alex Fernandez from Life Chiropractic and Acupuncture. Today I want to explain to you about the famous sciatic nerve. What it looks like, how you can fix it, and what causes these kind of sciatic pain problems.
So let’s look at some very basic anatomy. We’re here looking at the back of this person. Here’s the spinal cord, and you could see the sciatic nerve traveling down the butt, down the leg, right below the knee, and then it splits into two nerves, and then goes all the way down to your foot. This is the anatomy of the sciatic nerve. We have two sciatic nerves, one on the right side and one on the left side.
Now, I’m going to take you to the computer here. We’re going to see how this nerve distributes from the low back and travels down the legs. So again, left side and the right side. Sciatic nerve is very thick, it’s about this thick. So it has a lot of pain fibers which creates the pain that most people experience.
Now, how do people get these kind of issues? Why do they get sciatic pain? Number one, they do some heavy lifting in an incorrect way. So they go and they bend, and they pick something up, and then they twist. That can create sciatic pain. If we look here again at our poster, a disc herniation can press into the back of the spinal cord, and it can pinch that nerve as well. So, you can herniate a disc with trauma. You can fall down a ladder, you can fall down the stairs, you can get involved in a car accident, and that will create sciatic pain. One of the common things that I see in the winter is when people are shoveling snow. So when they’re shoveling snow, they’re picking up a lot of weight, and then they’re twisting their body to throw the snow. They can get sciatica. I see this here often throughout the winter time.
Now, what can you do about it? Chiropractors are very trained in taking care of sciatic pain. When you come to the office we’ll do an evaluation, we’re gonna examine what’s going on in your low back. We’re also gonna examine which sciatic nerve you have pain. We do special tests where we’re targeting to see what is causing the pain at the sciatic nerve. After we do our examination which includes taking your history, then we’ll take an x-ray. We’ll see if your misalignment is either to the left, is either to the right, and if it’s creating that kind of problem. So after we do the thorough examination, after we do the x-rays, then we’ll be able to tell you exactly how to fix your sciatic nerve.
Sometimes it can take up to four, six, or eight weeks for your sciatic nerve to heal. That’s typically the time that is taking me to get somebody to heal from a sciatic pain. So I hope that helps and provides value for you.
