sciatica pain
Simple Stretching Series
If you ever experience an afternoon slump, there is an easy way to revive your energy.
On each step in the series remember to:
* Breathe deeply and slowly.
* Stretch to the point of feeling a “release,” but not to the point of feeling pain.
* Hold each stretch for 10-30 seconds, or more if it feels good.
* Go slow and be gentle. Over time you’ll actually feel greater benefits every day.
Office Stretching Series
1. Touch the Sky. Reach your arms up to the sky and as far back as you can safely go. You can try grasping like you’re trying to reach the stars.
2. Side Stretch. While standing reach your one arm over head and to the opposite side. You can keep the other hand on your hip or in the air.
3. Touch Your Toes. Take off your shoes if you can. Wiggle your toes. Now bend at the hip and reach for your toes. Bending your knees is OK.
4. Shoulder Opener. Lean your palms against the wall above your head and bending at the hip to stretch out your shoulders and back.
5. Twirl ‘Em. Make circles with your wrists and ankles. Rotate in both directions. Also with each hand alternate making fists and opening your hand wide. Do this back and forth a few times. If you work at a keyboard, you’ll be love how this feels!
6. Loosen Your Neck. Go slow and gentle with neck stretching. Slowly stretch forward and back, side to side, round in circles, and twist to look over each shoulder. Remember slow and gentle. Only do what feels good.
7. Arm Stretch. Straighten one arm out in front of you. Now with the other arm pull the straight arm toward your opposite shoulder. Go slowly. If you use a computer mouse a lot during the day, this should feel really good. Keep your hands open wide to make this even better.
8. Arm Circles. While standing rotate each arm around in big circles both forward and backward. Do one arm at a time. Do this slowly.
9. Seated Twist. First sit up straight. Twist in your chair keeping your hips stationary. Twist all the way from lower back all the way up to your head looking over your shoulder.
10. Quad Stretch and Balance. Stand on one leg and stretch out your quadricep muscle by bending your knee and pulling your foot to your buttocks. If you’d like to advance this a bit, bend at the hip to touch your toes while doing this.
11. Hip Opener. Sitting in your chair cross one leg over the other so that ankle rests just above the knee. While doing this lean forward to feel a nice stretch in your hip and buttocks. Over time this one exercise can help with lower back problems and sciatica. It’s pretty amazing. Repeat with the other leg.
12. Seated Back Bend. Sitting in your chair you can do this a few different ways. Each of these will give a nice stretch to your stomach and chest muscles:
* Sitting on the edge of your chair with arms in the air, simply reach up and back.
* Sitting on the edge, clasp your hands behind your back with arms pointing down. Roll your shoulders in towards each other in the back and lean your head back.
* If you have a lean back chair, lift your arms in the air and lean back for a nice stretch.
Janine Blair
Natural Solutions And Remedies For Pain Relief
Posture – Slouching is when you drop your shoulder forward and your head downward. The tendency is for your back to work extra just to maintain your balance. As a result, it puts pressure on your vertebrae, which will likely cause your back to ache. Stop slouching and start to stand and seat straight. This will not only make your look good, it will also make you feel good.
Massage Therapy – Massage helps relieve back pain, shin splints, frozen shoulder, carpal tunnel type symptoms, neck stiffness, sciatica, bursitis, headaches, tennis elbow, and low back stiffness by treating trigger points. Trigger points are accretions of waste products in the region of a nerve receptor which manifest themselves in the forms of dull ache, hot or cold, harp pain, pins and needles, and tingling among others.
Exercise – Your bones should carry your weight. But if your weight exceeds the carrying capacity, then you should be feeling pain right now. There are certain exercises that strengthen the bones. Meanwhile, loosing weight is another way to relieve the stress on your bone. People who are either obese or overweight and experiencing pain might not realize that the main contributor to the pain they feel is their weight.
Balneotherapy – “balneo” (from balneum) is a Latin word meaning bath. Balneotherapy is a kind of hydrotherapy that involves bathing in warm water or mineral water. Researches found that balneotherapy possesses significant beneficial effects for people experiencing body pain. Balneotherapy meanwhile should not be applied to people with heart condition unless supervised with primary care provider.
Sleeping position – the best way to sleep is on your side with your knees bend with a pillow between your legs. For pregnant women who experience back pain, sleeping on the side would be the best remedy for it. Place a pillow under your abdomen to support its weight.
Vitamin D – pain can be a manifestation of Vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D can be found in fortified milk and cereals, soya milk, margarine, fish, and sunlight.
Hot and cold – back pain can be alleviated by applying cold pack at their back. Other people find heat to be a source of relief. A combination of either hot or cold and massage would also work for other people. Trying out any of these would not do you harm so feel free to explore the possibilities of finding relief to either of them.
Rest – at the office, an all day’s work would mean seating for long hours. This is okay if you are maintaining a good posture all throughout the day. However, the temptation to slouch is great that you completely forget you are slouching. After that, you complain about the pain at your back. Surprisingly, a few minutes of rest is all you need help remove the pain.
John Furnem
http://www.articlesbase.com/medicine-articles/natural-solutions-and-remedies-for-pain-relief-85337.html
Insider Secrets to Find the Cause of Your Back Pain Now
During my 17 years practicing medicine, patients and friends constantly ask me:
“What is the most likely cause of my back pain?”
I’ve written this simple guide for people who have the same question in mind.
The commonest type of back pain is caused by tears or strains to ligaments, tendons or muscles around the lower spinal cord. The underlying factors are straining, poor posture, incorrect lifting and inactivity. The pain usually appears 36-48 hours after the strain or can be gradual in onset. The symptoms can be mild to moderate depending on the level of injury.
Herniation of a vertebral disc may be associated with back pain and also sciatica…shooting pain down the back of one leg. It is most often seen in people in their 30′s and 40′s but can also occur in the elderly. The condition is caused by underlying disc degeneration. This can lead to a gradual rupturing of the disc and Herniation of the disc contents. This process can be exacerbated by physical straining or exercise. The sciatica occurs when the disc contents press on the neighboring spinal nerve. The pain, which can be very severe, may be associated with numbness or tingling in the area supplied by that nerve (dermatome).
Facet Joint Arthropathy can result from arthritic changes, degeneration or trauma to the facet joints of the vertebral bodies of the spine. These joints are normally covered with cartilage and lined by synovial membranes. Arthritis leads to wear and tear of the cartilage and inflammation of the membranes. This leads to grating movements between the two facet joints. This type of back pain is worsened by torsion or elongation of the spine. The pain is normally well localized and may spread to the buttocks.
Narrowing of the spinal canal (Spinal Stenosis) is more commonly seen in the elderly. It is secondary to vertebral degeneration. It may also occur with infection, trauma, tumors and arthritis of the spine and with bony spurs and disk herniation. It can progress to severe spinal cord injury. It is associated with back pain as well as pain, numbness and weakness of the buttocks.
Radiculopathy (‘a pinched nerve’) is associated with back pain and pain, numbness, weakness and tingling of the legs. It occurs when inflammation of a spinal nerve is caused by pressure or friction. The underlying factors can be tumors, bony spurs, disc herniation, and fractures of the vertebrae. The presence of muscle weakness in the legs as well as pain in the back… indicates severe symptoms. In such cases you should seek a doctor’s advice immediately.
Tumors of the spine, whether they originate in the spine or spread from distant organs, can cause terrible back pain through pressure on the nerves and spine. Chronic persistent pain despite treatment is suggestive although not diagnostic of a spinal tumor. Be suspicious when such pain is associated with generalized signs of cancer such as weight loss, loss of appetite and tiredness.
Infection of the spinal cord or surrounding tissues causes pressure on the spine and can result in severe back pain and loss of function of the affected spinal nerves. Examples include spinal meningitis and osteomyelitis.
Pathology of the vertebrae of the spine can cause pressure on the spinal nerves, inflammatory conditions and degeneration. Examples include osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and ankylosing spondylitis. Ankylosing spondylitis is characterized by pain in the back and stiffness. This stiffness is more pronounced in the morning as is not helped by rest. There may also be pain in the shoulders, neck and mid-spine. Osteoporosis ( low bone mass) leads to fractures. Fractures cause sudden severe back pain localized to the area of the fracture. Osteoarthritis, the wear and tear of joints with age, leads to chronic back pain which tends to be poorly localized. It is normally associated with stiffness and pain which is not eased by rest.
anonymous
Herniated Disc and Sciatica Pain – What is the Connection?
Is your sciatica pain common to herniated disc? If so, how do you get pain relief now?
There certainly are a lot of different things that can go wrong with our backs. One of the worst problems that we can have, however, is if we have a herniated disc, especially if it is irritating the sciatic nerve. A herniated disc occurs whenever the padding that exists between the individual vertebrae begins to break down and eventually ruptures or protrudes. This can cause enough pain on its own but there are times whenever the bulging material will press against the sciatic nerve, either pinching it or irritating it in some way or another. This can cause a lot of suffering for the individual that has these kinds of problems.
You might be interested to know that there is some controversy over exactly what is going wrong in this particular case. Some doctors will refer to it as a ruptured disc while others may refer to it as a torn disc or perhaps even disc disease. Regardless of what they are calling it, however, you are probably interested in what can be done in order to alleviate some of the symptoms that you are experiencing. Although this will have a lot to do with the different diagnosis that you get, there are some things that can be done in order to take some of the pressure off of the sciatic nerve.
The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve that exists in the body. Starting in the lower back, it runs through the area of the buttox and then down into the legs. Since it is such a large nerve and covers a lot of ground inside of your body, there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong with it. Typically, the pain will occur because of problems that are experienced in the lower back. If this nerve is pinched or irritated in some way, perhaps through a herniated disc, the pain may be localized or it may even travel down into your legs. In order for you to get rid of the pain that you are experiencing, you need to remove the pressure from the sciatic nerve.
One thing that you may be told to do is to use hot and cold treatments on this area of your back. This is a very common thing whenever it comes to herniated discs and they can actually help to ease some of the pain by reducing swelling. In the case of sciatica pain and a herniated disc, however, more may be needed in order for you to totally overcome the problem.
There are several types of physical therapy that you may have to go through in order to overcome the pain. Typically, this is accomplished through stretching and at times strengthening exercises that are done in the presence of a qualified physical therapist. There are also some specific exercises that you may be able to do at home in order to help speed along your recovery process.
Sciatica pain is something you won’t want to live with for an extended length of time. Effective treatment is available now that will ease your sciatica pain sooner than you might think.
Verona Raymond
Herniated Disc and Sciatica Pain – What is the Connection?
Is your sciatica pain common to herniated disc? If so, how do you get pain relief now?
There certainly are a lot of different things that can go wrong with our backs. One of the worst problems that we can have, however, is if we have a herniated disc, especially if it is irritating the sciatic nerve. A herniated disc occurs whenever the padding that exists between the individual vertebrae begins to break down and eventually ruptures or protrudes. This can cause enough pain on its own but there are times whenever the bulging material will press against the sciatic nerve, either pinching it or irritating it in some way or another. This can cause a lot of suffering for the individual that has these kinds of problems.
You might be interested to know that there is some controversy over exactly what is going wrong in this particular case. Some doctors will refer to it as a ruptured disc while others may refer to it as a torn disc or perhaps even disc disease. Regardless of what they are calling it, however, you are probably interested in what can be done in order to alleviate some of the symptoms that you are experiencing. Although this will have a lot to do with the different diagnosis that you get, there are some things that can be done in order to take some of the pressure off of the sciatic nerve.
The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve that exists in the body. Starting in the lower back, it runs through the area of the buttox and then down into the legs. Since it is such a large nerve and covers a lot of ground inside of your body, there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong with it. Typically, the pain will occur because of problems that are experienced in the lower back. If this nerve is pinched or irritated in some way, perhaps through a herniated disc, the pain may be localized or it may even travel down into your legs. In order for you to get rid of the pain that you are experiencing, you need to remove the pressure from the sciatic nerve.
One thing that you may be told to do is to use hot and cold treatments on this area of your back. This is a very common thing whenever it comes to herniated discs and they can actually help to ease some of the pain by reducing swelling. In the case of sciatica pain and a herniated disc, however, more may be needed in order for you to totally overcome the problem.
There are several types of physical therapy that you may have to go through in order to overcome the pain. Typically, this is accomplished through stretching and at times strengthening exercises that are done in the presence of a qualified physical therapist. There are also some specific exercises that you may be able to do at home in order to help speed along your recovery process.
Sciatica pain is something you won’t want to live with for an extended length of time. Effective treatment is available now that will ease your sciatica pain sooner than you might think.
Verona Raymond
