Self-Help for Sciatica: 9 Stretches for Pain Relief

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Have you ever had a painful experience with sciatica? Sciatica pain is associated with tingling, numbness, weakness, and even an electric-shock-like or burning pain from the waist down to the feet. However, sciatica is only a symptom. What is its cause? Dr. Chen Chaolong from Quansheng Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic in Taiwan provided a few ways to relieve acute pain. Here are nine self-rehabilitation exercises he suggested.

Sciatica Causes

Sciatica is what modern medicine calls it. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) calls the condition “pain in the lower back and legs.” Sciatica affects many people, but definitive data on its incidence and prevalence are still lacking. An estimated 5 to 10 percent of people with low back pain also suffer from sciatica. Well-established personal and occupational risk factors for sciatica include age, height, stress, smoking, and exposure to vibrating vehicles.

The causes of sciatica pain can be roughly divided into four categories:

1. Trauma: When the spine is struck by an external force, such as in a car accident, it results in compression of the sciatic nerve.
2. Degeneration: This occurs mainly in the elderly. As one ages, the spinal ligaments become weaker, resulting in the progressive hollowing of the bone marrow. In addition, as the space between the vertebrae narrows, the intervertebral foramen gets squeezed, resulting in pain caused by nerve compression.
3. Poor posture: The lumbar spine is often subject to undue pressure, such as when a person has poor posture, tilts their pelvis forward too much, sits for a prolonged period, wears high heels too often, twists their back too much, and other factors. In this case, the spine is compressed, and the intervertebral disc is herniated, which squeezes the nerve.
4. Inflammation of the piriformis muscle: If the piriformis muscle in the buttocks is inflamed and swollen, it will press on the sciatic nerve below, causing pain.

TCM holds that environmental forces cause many diseases. These are called the six exogenous evils: wind, cold, heat, dryness, dampness, and fire. In addition to the above four causes, TCM believes that invading exogenous evils can also cause pain. These external forces could be as simple as squatting on the ground for a long time or even a humid environment. This pain is called arthralgia, or joint pain, caused by exogenous wind-cold-damp pathogens.