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How Acupuncture Can Help With Sciatica at AcuPhysioHealth

Tuesday 25 July 2017, 12:55PM

By Beckie Wright

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Next to stress and back pain, sciatic issues are one of the more common complaints they see at the AcuPhysioHealth clinic, and in this article we’ll learn a little anatomy and physiology so we can better understand why the sciatic nerve can get irritated, and what we can do to calm it down.

 

The sciatic nerve is huge, one of the biggest in humans and many other species. It runs the entire length of the leg, and is composed of nerve roots from L4 (the 4th lumbar vertebrae) to S3 (3rd sacral). It is carries sensory and motor information for just about the entire leg, so anything out of whack with the sciatic nerve can lead to a great deal of discomfort. So what causes sciatica, and how can acupuncture help?

 

Anything putting pressure on the sciatic nerve can elicit a whole host of aggravating symptoms, from a shooting pain down parts of the back or leg, to numbness and tingling over the whole area. Pressure on the nerve can come from a whole host of things: a slipped or bulging disc, spinal stenosis, a tumor or just run of the mill muscle spasms.

 

Muscle spasms are the most common and usually the easiest to treat, both at home and with acupuncture. When an irritated muscle is the culprit, it is usually a muscle called the piriformis. In the. In addition to the piriformis, there are many other muscles along the sciatic nerve, all of which can cause the same symptoms.

 

Disc problems, a very common cause of low back pain, can lead to a variety of symptoms including sciatica, and at AcuPhysioHealth they absolutely recommend you get acupuncture if you have problems with sciatica. Acupuncture can help relieve pain, relax upset muscles, and help your body to heal itself without drugs or expensive and potentially risky surgery. In some cases they may recommend an MRI just to rule out anything serious (badly herniated disc, tumors, etc), but for many patients acupuncture is all they need, so to find out more about traditional Chinese medicine, please go to http://www.acuphysiohealth.co.nz .