What are the underlying causes of sciatica?

Question

Nick Hadinger · Answer

What are the underlying causes of sciatica? So sciatic is just a really bad vague term. That just gets thrown around on the internet for pain going down your leg from your back and really it doesn't even need to come from your back, but we can have several different forms or really causes of that will start kind of Central. So you can have a central origin coming from the spine where you can have Of spinal stenosis, which is basically just a narrowing of a opening. So you can have stenosis actually around the spinal cord, which is a serious condition and that would usually cause symptoms on both legs. If you had that going on, you can also have foramen ovale stenosis, which is where the nerve root comes out between the two vertebrae. If that hole is smaller because of degenerative changes or maybe your Disc height is a little bit less and that kind of brings the whole closer together that can cause nerve symptoms, like, sciatica down one leg. You can also have nerve entrapment symptoms which are more peripheral. So the the sciatic nerve runs all the way from your back and all of its branches go all the way down to your feet, right? So anywhere along that pathway, we can have muscles that are tight that restrict the slide and glide of that nerve and that can kind of caused some of those symptoms too. So saying what I really don't like, when people say I have sciatica what can I do? Well, we need to figure out where it's coming from first and that's really going to dictate what you can do to help yourself.

Bart Green, DC, MSEd, PhD · Answer

So this question is from Jody. Thank you for sending in this question. It's a great question. What are the underlying causes of sciatica and going to go back to the question again? Because that was fast? What are the underlying causes of sciatica? There are many. And first, let's start with the word sciatica, all that means is you're talking about a symptom, it's like saying headache. It's not a diagnosis. It tells us that Person is having pain that goes from the lower back down past the calf and into usually into the ball of the foot, that that pain is sharp. Deep can be electrical, in sensation and goes down the posterior aspect of the leg. I get people coming in who are pointing the front of the thigh and they're telling me they're having sciatica and they're just having like pain and it may not be any More than referred pain or local pain, sciatica is a pain that's generated by a large nerve that is formed by big earners. They come together and create the sciatic nerve and that's how it's received. Its name causes of it. There are many causes most of which are very difficult to pin down because what we see on Imaging doesn't always necessarily line up with what somebody's symptoms. So, a lot of times people want to get in, get an MRI. Give me 50% of the people over the age of 50, put them in a magnet and you will see disc degenerative changes on their spine. So MRI doesn't always give us the answer so what can do it? Certainly disc herniation degenerative change, osteophytes are bone, spurs in the spine. You can have pseudo sciatica from muscles in your, but that gives you pain at the, a door, around the sciatic nerve, but it's not coming from the lower back. And you could have in super rare instances something in the pelvis and organ, that would be pressing up against tissue. That could give you pain in your leg, but usually it's muscles and Joint dysfunction. That's going to give you the symptoms back there and then sometimes you'll have the disc herniation or stenosis in the spine. I hope that helps answer your question.

Dr. Brian Cunningham · Answer

What are some underlying causes of sciatica? That basically means you have leg pain but a lot of people confuse it with the sciatic nerve and here I'll explain why you can get leg pain from the sciatic nerve and you can see that you have two sciatic nerves. This purple one here is highlighted and it gives you an idea from the front view where the nerves come out of the back and they join to come down Into the sciatic nerve when we turn this around, you can see from the back that the nerves come out of the intervertebral, foramina of this spine, and come down the leg. So you can get Impingement of the nerve in the central area of the spine, which will cause leg pain on either one side or both sides. And then also, you can get some more localized compression of the nerve right along here, or in the back area, where some of the muscles can lay on top of it. And then also we're more, it's in the peripheral area. So you have to understand where the nerve is getting impinged.

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"What are the underlying causes of sciatica?"