Sciatica Pain
Sciatica pain is not fun for anyone. You often hear it used to describe different types of pain that spread down the leg or legs. Technically this is incorrect. The word sciatica (sometimes misspelled as cyatica, sciatica, or ciatica) is a way of describing the symptoms of pain in the legs along with numbness, weakness or tingling sensations that travels down from the lower back through the buttocks on down through the large sciatic nerve located in the posterior of the leg or legs.
A large number of people who experience sciatic pain will improve in time (normally in a few weeks or months) and can usually get relief with out surgical intervention and with sciatica treatment. On the other hand, for those who do not get relief sciatica can be very severe and debilitating. A symptom indicating pain varies widely and usually lessens after a couple of weeks or months without surgical treatment.
Radiculopathy is the word used for the clinical diagnosis for referring to sciatica. Radiculopathy means a spinal disc has protruded out from where it is normally supposed to be in its place in the vertebra. This in turn causes pressure on the radicular nerve or nerve root in the low back forming a part of the sciatic nerve.
When it comes to sciatic pain it is important to know that sciatica is a sign that there is a problem, of something irritating or compressing the nerve roots that make up the sciatic nerve, instead of a medical disorder or diagnosis alone. This is a significant distinction because it is the essential diagnosis vs. the symptoms of sciatica, which often needs to be treated in order to ease sciatic pain.
People between thirty and fifty years old are the average sufferers of sciatica. Usually some type of injury or happenstance does not result in sciatica. Sciatica is moreover develops from average wear and tear on the lower parts of the spinal column.
Sciatica pain for some is very harsh and incapacitating. Other people, the pain may be infrequent and irritable but unfortunately has the potential to worsen. Even though the pain can be unbearable, it is uncommon that permanent nerve damage results. Most sciatica pain comes from inflammation and gets better in a week to a few months. Due to the fact that the spinal cord is not apparent in the lumbar region of the spine, a herniated disc does not present a cause for concern of paralysis.
Sciatic pain is not fun. Most of the time you can relieve the pain by non-surgical therapies and treatments that are often in the form of stretching or other mild exercise. If surgically, necessary relief is by means of taking the pressure off the nerve. This is surgery, called microdiscectomy, discectomy or lumbar laminectomy which is the removal of a part of a disc that is causing the problem.