You’re cleaning up the kitchen, bend over to grab a cup out of the dishwasher, and bam: the pain hits out of nowhere. A sharp, stabbing pain in your back that makes it hard to straighten back up without bracing with your hands. You take it easy for the rest of the day, but the next morning the pain isn’t just in your back: it’s traveling around your hip and down the back of your leg. Driving is hard. Sitting at work makes it travel even further down your leg. Sound familiar?
That’s exactly what happened to one of our patients, Elaine. She came in with back pain so bad she couldn’t get out of bed by herself in the morning, not without a 20-minute struggle. She figured it would ease up the next day, the way it had the two other times something similar happened. So she waited. Two months later, she was still suffering: restless nights, trouble concentrating at work, a slight limp, and days she had to leave work early because the pain shooting down her leg was too much. That’s when she finally called us.
What is sciatica?
This is a classic case of sciatica, one of the most common conditions we see at Simply Physio. The sciatic nerve exits your lower back and travels down the back of your leg. When it gets irritated, you notice it: many people call it a “pinched nerve,” but it’s usually pressure around the nerve causing inflammation, often with numbness or pins and needles. Left to worsen, the nerve can become compressed, and a compressed nerve left too long can become permanently damaged.
Sciatica pain is often so excruciating it makes it hard to leave the house, drive, or sleep comfortably, and it nearly always gets worse when you sit. That’s the one thing that makes sciatica worse: sitting.
3 tips to try
- Try bending backwards. It may hurt at first, so work into it slowly. Try lying on your stomach and pressing up, or standing with your hands on your lower back and gently bending backwards.
- Avoid sitting for more than 15 minutes at a stretch. If you have to sit, don’t slouch, and use good back support. If symptoms are severe, resting on your back with a pillow under your knees can help.
- Avoid curling up in the fetal position, which tends to aggravate rather than relieve the irritation.
Sciatica is a painful, life-limiting condition, and it usually gets worse the longer it goes untreated. If resting and taking it easy for a few days doesn’t clear it up, don’t wait it out the way Elaine did: get it looked at.