Understanding The True Cause Of Sciatica Pain

I know that sciatica can be a particularly painful condition to live with. This is what started me on my quest to overcome my own sciatica pain. I used to use one of those heat pads. Sure, it would feel good for a while, but...well... after I took it off the pain would quickly come back, sometimes even worse than before. But guess what? It turns out that heat is actually the LAST thing you want to do if you've got sciatica. You should really be icing the area and then doing a few stretching exercises to get your back more flexible and centralize the sciatic pain to one specific spot.

Sciatica, in case you don't already know, is an either stabbing or dull pain that can shoot from your hips and buttocks all the way down to your toes and feet or anywhere in between. Sciatica is caused when your sciatic nerve is pinched by one of a few different causes that all place pressure on the nerve.

After figuring this all out, it became obvious to me that the way to find real lasting relief from sciatica was to find out what was causing the nerve to get pinched in the first place and resolve that. The sciatic nerve is the longest nerve in the body. branches out from the lower back and it runs down your hips, buttocks, legs, knees, and as far down as your feet and toes. So, you can experience sciatica pain anywhere from your lower back all the way to your feet.

Let's take a look now at a few common causes of sciatica:

* If you are not careful while lifting heavy boxes or objects, this can result in nerve damage and bring on sciatica.
* Another common thing that causes sciatica is natural disc degeneration as we age. The discs in your back will become less flexible and the space between them will become smaller leaving less room for the nerves.
* A tight Piriformis Muscle, which sits right on top of the sciatic nerve may crush or irritate your sciatic nerve and case a significant amount of pain. This is what cause my sciatica.

After learning exactly where your sciatic nerve is located and a few of the common causes of sciatica, you can deal with the problem better and you've got a better chance of really fixing it. Sciatica is by no means something to enjoy, but when you start to understand why it is happening, you'll be better equipped to wiping it out quickly and easily on your own.