So here's how to ease and prevent sciatica pain when standing with three
easy movements. Hey everyone, Dr. Rowe here at SpineCare in St. Joseph, Michigan.
When it comes to sciatica, it's all about pressure. When you stand in a position
for too long (what happens) you build compressive forces into those spinal
discs that cause them to bulge out. A bulging disc then goes to one side and
makes contact with a spinal nerve, pinches it and causes it to shoot down
the leg. So if you're a worker, or you have job duties that involve a lot of
standing in a stationary position, one of the first things that you're going to
want to do is just make sure to shift the weight every so often and possibly
just walk around. It's going to help take pressure off those discs immediately and
you might find that it does the trick to at least alleviate some sciatica pain right
off the bat. Another added bonus of these exercises is that it also will
help prevent sciatica pain in the future. If you start to feel a lot of pressure
being built into the low back, stop what you're doing and do these exercises
because you will take pressure out of that spinal disc and help avoid sciatic
symptoms in the future. The first one we're going to do is an extension
exercise, and with extension that means backwards movement. So this is how we're
going to do it. We're going to take our thumbs and go right by the belt line.
You're going find two bony spots, they're kind of like little mounds right on the
low back. That's where you want to make contact, and then from there you're going
to drive the pelvis forward while you take your upper body and lean that
backwards. So we're getting a nice banana shaped arch into our low back.
I'm driving the hips pelvis forward while I lean back with my upper body weight and
I always joke and call this the 'beer belly exercise' because it almost should
give you a nice beer belly with it. Hold this one for fifteen to thirty seconds,
relax and then just keep repeating it until you feel that it's giving you
relief. How you know this is really working is because you're going to get
what's called centralization of symptoms. So going back to our spinal disc, if we
put pressure into it it's going to cause it to go outwards,
especially to one side. When you pinch a nerve with a disc bulge it causes it to
shoot down the leg. There's your sciatica. When you unpinch that nerve, it starts to
come back up the leg (to the starting point) which would be the low back.
While you're doing this exercise, if you start to feel the pain not only decrease
in the back but start to come back up the leg, you know that you're directly
taking pressure off the disc. It's becoming unpinched, that nerve is
becoming unpinched, and you're starting to see that centralization of symptoms,
the best thing that you can see. So with this next exercise, we're going to focus on
one-sided sciatica pain. Sciatica tends to be one-sided because when you look at
a spinal disc, it's a cylinder. When you put pressure in there, it goes
towards the weakest side. So you either jut towards the left or towards the
right. Let's say that we have a lot of left-sided sciatica pain. I'm going to
take the afflicted side (which in this case would be the left) and I'm going to
put it next to a door or a wall. I'm then going to take the hand and arm on that
side and place it against that wall. The feet are going to go together and I want
to space them out about 12 to 18 inches away from that door. I'm then going to
put my shoulder into the door, so your body should almost be at a nice diagonal
line from the shoulder down to the feet. Then, I'm going to take the hand on the
opposite side, place it at the hip and then drive the afflicted side hip
towards the wall, and with this one (again) go to your comfort level. Hold that for
about 10 to 15 seconds, or longer if you're able to, and then just keep doing
it until you feel that sciatic like symptom start to alleviate. If you start
to feel it come back up the leg, even better!
So with this next exercise, we're going to use gravity to our aid to help
decompress a lumbar spinal disc. You can imagine with a spinal disc, that
compression (as we stand) it just keeps building, and building, and building
which causes that to bulge out further and further. What we need to do is the
opposite, almost like a nice traction in there to pull on it to bring that
bulging material back into the center, and this is how we're going to do it.
We need two even surfaces that we can stand in
between. You can use two sturdy chairs with good backing to do this. I just
found two counter tops, basically. So we're going to put our feet together,
we're going to grab at the edges of those level surfaces and then from there
go up onto our toes and then bend the knees, and then support your body weight
with your arms. Just let the whole lower body sag towards the floor. Gravity is
going to take everything down, so it's going to pull on those spinal discs and
bring that bulging material back in. Depending on your arm strength, try to
hold this one for at least 10 seconds. If you can hold it up to 30 seconds, even
better. Again, just keep repeating this until you feel that you're getting
relief with your sciatica pain.
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