Sciatica Relief Tips

Sciatica, or sciatic pain, is the radiating pain you feel when your sciatic nerve, one of the longest nerves in your body, is inflamed. Sciatic pain can be felt from your lower back all the way down into your leg. The pain you feel is often constant, and can be debilitating. While you and your doctor must find and treat the true cause of your sciatic pain, you must also treat the pain itself.

Treating Sciatica

• Causes for sciatica include injury, a slipped disk, herniated or prolapsed disks and pressure on the sciatic nerve. An attack of sciatica usually occurs on one side of your body or the other, and can last anywhere from a few days to months. It is always painful, and not just from the inflamed nerve. Your muscles along your lower back and down into your leg are going into spasm.

  Your doctor can prescribe analgesics, aspirin, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and/or acetaminophen, as well as steroid injections where the pain is localized. All of these can help, but they may be insufficient to ease the pain you are going through. You need other options.

Ice and Heat

• Start with an application of ice to the area above where the nerve seems to be inflamed. You can use a commercial ice pack, but a packaged bag of frozen peas can actually work better, since it shapes itself to your body much better. Leave the ice on for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. Ice helps reduce both the pain and the inflammation, just as it would for a strained muscle or tendon.

  After the ice, try applying moist heat wherever you feel your muscles going into spasm. You can use a hot water bottle, or you can put a wet, wrung-out cloth towel (not paper) in the microwave for about a minute. Always hand test the heat before you apply it. You don't want to burn yourself. Be very careful about using an electric heating pad. This kind of heat can be too intense for sciatica, and moist heat is better than dry heat. Continue to alternate ice for the sciatic nerve inflammation and heat for muscle spasms, and you should start to feel better.

Soaking the Pain Away

• Stretching out in a hot bath is another way of easing the muscle spasms that sciatic pain can cause. But make sure you can comfortably get in and out of your bath. If it hurts too much to bend, and to get up and down, a better bet is a long hot shower. Stand with your back to the shower, brace yourself against a towel rack or some other steady support, and let the hot water run against your lower back.

Get Support

• If you don't have a firm mattress on your bed, get one, or put the mattress you have on top of a wooden board. If it feels better to sleep on your side, place some long, firm bolster-type pillows on either side of you to support you. Your inflamed nerve will be less painful and your muscles are less likely to spasm if you are supported while you sleep.

  A back support cushion when you are sitting also helps, as well as one of those "donut" cushions that help relieve pressure on the base of the spine when you sit on them. When your back is properly supported, your muscles spasm less, hurt less and heal faster.

Acupuncture

• Acupuncture therapy addresses both pain and mobility issues. You can get treatments early on during an attack of sciatica. A session with a qualified acupuncture specialist can significantly decrease pain and increase mobility.