What are your top tips for reducing sciatic pain while waiting to get in to see a professional?

Question

Dr. Cindy Chang, MD · Answer

What are your top tips for reducing sciatic pain? While waiting to get in to see a professional? First of all, I would encourage you to listen to the recommendations from dr. Olson. They're all spot on and I agree with everything. He said a couple things to add is if you haven't gotten a standing desk yet since you've been working at home, for example, with covid, that I would encourage you that this is the time to get a standing desk. We know that when you're sitting those are when your disc pressure are the East. And when you're sitting and your disk pressure is high that creates more low back pain and can create more static pain. And if you're saying to yourself, I there's no way I can stand. I'm not strong enough to stand the whole time that I encourage you to get a standing desk which can go up and down, but also then to get a stool, which can go up and down. So, for example, this is what I have in my household. You can see that this is a stool and this will go up and down. What I can do is sometimes I can go all the way down. Move my desk all the way up and down, or Can then purchase a little bit so you're not really sitting fully sitting but you're still standing the bit and you're perching back against the stool and that will help you. In terms of when you feel fatigued, the second thing that we know will work based on evidence is that seen a physical therapist or a chiropractor to work with you on gentle stretching and strengthening. So any type of low back mobilization, type of exercises will work. Now I until you figure out the reason for Attica. Absolutely do not have anyone do anything like mobile manipulation? Don't do any cracking of the back. We don't want that until you've seen someone to really take a look at your back and examine you. But certainly someone that can give you again stretches and strengthening to do, within the limits of your pain will, definitely help you get better. And a lot of states have direct access to care including physical therapy. So, you don't need a referral to see. If it's go therapist and a good physical therapist and a chiropractor, will know what to do. So again, good luck with that. If you'd have sciatica, they're definitely things that you can do to help you with your pain into can get in to see a healthcare professional. Happy Thanksgiving.

Dr. Kristian Olson, MD · Answer

So what are your top tips for reducing sciatic pain? While waiting to get in to see a professional? And this is a really important question because about 85% of adults will have an episode of acute low back pain during their lives. Unfortunately, many people have them several times and it's a very common cause of visits the primary care doctor. There are a number of things you can do to reduce this pain and and I'll go through those really with four. Or main pieces of advice. The first is, don't stop moving. It used to be recommended that people. Go on bed, rest or just rest the back and, and it's been shown that as you continue activity, as tolerated, you'll recover sooner. The second thing is heat Heats been shown to decrease pain in the lower back. And and I recommend a heating pad at lower moderate Heat. For 20 minutes every two hours and then the third thing is over the counter medicines. If you don't have a contraindication to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medicines or n sets, such as peptic ulcer disease, or kidney disease or hypertension or an allergy, then you can take Ibuprofen, 400 to 600 milligrams every 6 hours with a little bit of food to protect your stomach or if you You have a contraindication then taking a set of Mana whenua, 650 milligrams every 6 hours is a good place to start. You don't want to take these medicines long-term, certainly without consulting your, your healthcare provider. And the fourth thing I really recommend is meditation, and and pain visualization to, to Really alleviate and help you cope with pain, which is a Great skill to be developing regardless. I should highlight that. If you have severe pain, that's debilitating. For more than 48 hours, you have severe back pain. That's accompanied by a fever. You have numbness or weakness in your legs or feet. That's worse than the back pain, or you have back pain with numbness of your private areas. You need to see a physician. Thank you.

Bart Green, DC, MSEd, PhD · Answer

So what are your top tips for reducing? Static pain while waiting to get in to see a professional? Some of these tips would be the same after. You have seen a professional, you want to do these anyway, the first thing is avoid bed, rest. The last thing you want to do is lie around. Hoping it will get better every guideline and nearly every research paper at this, point will tell us to avoid bed rest when we have back pain or sciatica. The next thing you should do is to stay mobile. Do whatever you need to do to move around to reduce the pain. Through movement is very important. If any motion seems to make it worse than just don't do that motion. But try it again later if it's really severe possibly getting down on the hands and knees and moving around, take the weight bearing load off of your spine and off the tissues and then really important to realize that all causes of sciatica are not Catastrophic and don't let your mind go down the path of catastrophic thinking. Once you get assets to probably find out, it's not as bad as you might think it is. And certainly, the last thing I just try to keep people off of the internet. There's just a lot of bad information misinformation and certainly Scare Tactics. So stay mobile, avoid bed, rest do the movement that you can. And if you're having a hard time getting into a professional, maybe you can. Requests to do a video visit with the professional that you're trying to get into maybe the access will be faster. So I hope this helps and good luck.

Dr. Lisa Goodman, DC · Answer

Hey Samantha. Thanks for the question. What are your top tips while for reducing sciatic pain? While waiting to get in to see a professional sciatic, pain is super irritating. It can just be pain into the buttocks down the hamstring or all the way down into the foot. It can be really hard to get on with your daily life. When you're dealing with sciatic pain. The number one thing that we recommend is trying to find comfortable positions, sitting often times is going to aggravate it. So, we may encourage more standing Often times stretching is going to aggravate it, so you may want to avoid long traction, stretching of like the hamstring in the back, that will attraction the nerve, depending on what's causing the sciatic pain. Stretching, usually players it up, one position that can be comfortable again, depending on what's causing. It is a facedown position on the floor, we call that like a cobra or an upward dog depending on tolerance Cobra. Pose can actually reduce pain, sciatic pain, You can try ice and heat again, it's going to kind of depend on whether it's coming from the low back or from the glutes. If there is weakness associated with your sciatic pain, that is a red flag and that's something that needs to be taken care of immediately. If there's like a foot drop or you're unable to push off or weight bear, effectively on your feet, you want to get that checked out using Imaging or seeing a neurologist much quicker or a chiropractor much quicker than if you don't have weakness. And beyond that, sometimes people can find foam rolling on the glutes, like the piriformis effective. It's mostly a game of trying to determine what positions are the most comfortable. There are some medical interventions as well. P patients. Have found it really helpful to get some kind of oral, steroid or anti-inflammatory, which you could see somebody at Urgent Care, maybe to get that sooner than getting in with a primary care or neurologist. Or chiropractor. So I hope those things those tips help. It's a really good question and it's something that nobody really likes to deal with. Feel free to ask any follow-ups.

Sue Falsone · Answer

What are your tips for reducing sciatic pain while waiting to get in to see a professional? I have three things that I typically will tell people to do. The first thing is to avoid sitting as much as possible. Sciatic pain can either be coming from an issue in your low back or from an issue in your hip. And so when you're sitting, you're applying direct pressure onto that nerve that is angry. So I tell people to either stand or lay down as much as possible, but to really avoid sitting as much as you possibly can. The second is to continue to move. So just making sure that you're going on daily walks and you're being as active as possible. Rest can be not very helpful for sciatic pain. So the more people can move typically, the better they feel. And then the third thing I tell people to do is to change the sensory input into the bottom of their foot. So the sciatic nerve actually comes off of a bunch of nerves in your back and all of those nerves go down and they innervate the bottom of your foot. So I have just found that if people use a tennis ball and either roll out the bottom of their foot, specifically like a ball that's got a bunch of little plastic spikes on it so it doesn't obviously puncture your skin, but just is a little bit prickly to the bottom of your foot, or you can look up the term rock mat. So a mat that's literally has what looks like a bunch of little rocks or pebbles on it. And I will have my clients place a rock mat in front of their kitchen sink or their bathroom sink and that just changes the sensory input into the bottom of the foot, which can really alter the pain sensation into the sciatic nerve. So those are my top three tips that I will typically tell people until they can get a proper evaluation. Avoid sitting, keep moving, and change that sensory input into the foot by either standing on a rock mat or rolling the bottom of your foot with a tennis ball or a golf ball and see if that helps to manage some of your pain.

Swimming

Triathlon

Strength

Photography

Track & Field

Nutrition

Running

Physical Therapy

Pets

Cycling

Podcasting

HealthCare

Hockey

Musculoskeletal

First Responders

Integrative Medicine

Chiropractic

Cross Country Skiing

Adaptive Sports

Surfing

Climbing

Tennis

Mental Health

Mind Body

Military

Criminal Justice

Liquor

Scholars

Golf

Soccer

CrossFit

Pickleball

What are your top tips for reducing sciatic pain while waiting to get in to see a professional?

Dr. Cindy Chang, MD

Dr. Cindy Chang, MD

Dr. Kristian Olson, MD

Bart Green, DC, MSEd, PhD

Dr. Lisa Goodman, DC

Sue Falsone