Do you have sciatica? Pain running down the back of your leg? Numbness? Tingling? Watch to find out what is means, where the sciatica pain comes from and what to do about it.

Hi this is Dana Ranahan at Body Works Sports Physiotherapy in North Vancouver, and today I’m here to talk about sciatica. I don’t know if any of you have had pain like this but it can be pretty debilitating. So I’ve had a lot of questions in the clinic about what is it? and how does it happen?

So basically I’ve printed up a little picture that we can show you that shows about where the nerve travels. Sciatica nerve is a nerve that comes from your back and travels down the leg and branches off into different parts of the foot. As it’s shown in this picture, sometimes you can get pain referring down there, numbness, tingling, all kinds of different sensations and sometimes actual weakness. So if there is compression of the nerve up here in your low back, it can create trouble down the whole chain like pain or numbness, but it can also create weakness which is a bigger problem for the nerve.

So effectively when the nerve comes out of the low back, down here, the nerve travels down through the buttock, down the leg and sometimes you can get into trouble where the nerve is coming out where there is compression or tight muscles of altered mechanics that can drive pain.

So one of the things we need to sort out is what is creating that trouble for you? why is you back tight? Sometimes there is tightness in the buttock and the piriformis muscle that can give you this pain and refer it down and ultimately sourcing out why this is tight will help us get to the root of the problem and treat it. If we can release the compression and get you moving better through here, we can take the pressure off the nerve and take away some of that pain referring down the leg and lessen it off and also then get stronger. This is really how you need to manage it going forward.

If you have more questions, please give us a call.