What Sciatica Can Feel Like
Hi, everyone. This is Dr. Devon Barley with Greenwich Bay Chiropractic, and in this video series, we’ve been talking a lot about sciatica.
Sciatica is typically a sharp, shooting pain all the way down the leg. Oftentimes, it’s coming from the back, and it can be pretty debilitating. You can even have weakness in the leg that’s affected, which keeps you from doing the things that you wanna do.
If you think that you have sciatica, we’re gonna talk about three very gentle and easy stretches that you can do on your own at home that should provide some relief.
Forward-Leaning Stretch
The first one is very simple. Whenever we think about sciatica, we wanna think about our posture. When we’re sitting, we wanna make sure we’re keeping good posture: the spine straight up and down, with your shoulders nice and back and down to have that neutral posture.
This first exercise is just a forward-leaning stretch. With that posture, all you’re gonna do is hinge at the waist, keeping your spine straight, and go all the way down. Do that for as long as you’re comfortable or as far as you’re comfortable. You’re gonna do that three times and hold at the bottom for 10 seconds each time. That can help separate the vertebrae and take some of the pressure off the nerve.
Figure-Four Stretch
The second thing is the piriformis muscle. If the pain’s going down the left leg, the piriformis muscle sits right on top of the sciatic nerve. To help stretch that, there are two other exercises you can do.
The first one is figure four. You’re gonna cross your leg over into a figure four, again with that posture nice and straight up and down, and lean forward. Basically, you wanna lean forward until you feel a stretch kind of in your buttock where that nerve is starting to ping. Hold for 10 seconds, come back up, and do that three times.
Knee-to-Chest Stretch
The last one is a combination of the two. Sitting up nice and tall, it’s gonna be knee to chest. You’re gonna bring your leg over this way—not figure four, more midline—and bring it up to you. Now you’re gonna lean forward and hold for 10 seconds again.
Pay Attention to How the Stretches Feel
Those three exercises are very simple exercises you can do to help take the pressure off. Keep in mind, when we’re feeling the sciatic nerve, we wanna think of it as injured. It’s almost like an elastic band that’s stretched all the way. Sometimes we can exercise and stretch too much, and that can actually flare up the sciatic nerve.
If you notice any relief from these stretches, that’s great. If you notice they’re increasing the pain a little bit, we’re gonna recommend that you stop and get evaluated by a healthcare professional. But keep in mind, if they do increase some of the leg pain, that’s relatively normal for a case like this because that sciatic nerve is so, so irritated.
These are three simple things you can do on your own at home just to take some of the pressure off. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you on the next video.
