In this video, I'm going to show you three easy ways to help prevent sciatica
pain while seated. Hey everyone, Dr. Rowe here at SpineCare in
St. Joseph, Michigan. So these stretches you can do throughout the day, any time
that you feel that you're having pressure being built onto that sciatic nerve.
It's not only good for preventing sciatica, because it will help take
pressure off that nerve, but if you do start to feel sciatica, it will help
relieve it very quickly. So to start off with, let's address the big cause of
sciatica and low back issues. That is poor posture while sitting. So if you
have bad posture from leaning forward, typing, computer work, using cell phones,
you name it... you have to address that first. No matter what you do, there's no
stretch, no exercise that is going to take the stress and tension that is
being built into your lower back, and on that sciatic nerve, if you just
constantly put stress on it from bad posture. So address that first and then
move on to these next steps. The first stretch that we're going to do is called
a sciatic floss. It's really easy. What you need to do is make sure that you
have good posture. You're going to take the leg of the affected side, so in this
case it's my left side, and what we're going to do is bring the toes back
towards us while keeping the leg completely straight, and if you need a
little bit extra support you can definitely hold underneath the leg, but
with this, once you bring the toes back towards you it's really going to
intensify a really good stretch into the calf, back of the leg, buttock, into the
low back. So next, we're going to take the toes slowly away from us, and that's the
floss. You're just slowly bringing it towards you and then slowly taking them
away. This takes a lot of tension off that sciatic nerve and I like to keep
doing this until I feel like I'm getting a lot of relief. You can do it for a
couple minutes if you'd like. Just slowly take the toes away from you and then
slowly take them back. So after doing the first sciatic floss, if you still feel
like there's a lot of built-up tension and pressure that needs to be released
we can take it to the next level with an advanced sciatic floss. It's going to
incorporate movements of the first part. We're going to
bring the toes away from us, and then we're going to bring him back towards us.
But this one, we're going to use our upper body weight to help intensify the
stretch. I'm going to start with my toes away from me and then I'm going to
then lean into it. You're really going to feel a really good
stretch right into the back leg (again), the calf, buttocks low back, depending on
how tight your muscles are. Then we're going to bring the toes back
towards us, but while we do this, move your head backwards with the
movement of your foot. It's just a nice slow, gliding motion to help relieve
tension and pressure off that sciatic nerve. Again, do this one until you feel a
lot of release of muscle tightness and pressure off that sciatic nerve.
Very simple. So if you really need a lot of tension relief onto that sciatic nerve,
you can then do what's called a slump stretch. It's very similar to the floss
stretch. So with good posture, we're going to bring that leg, we're going to bring the
toes towards us and then I'm going to just slump into it. So I'm taking my
upper body weight, my eyes are almost just going right towards my toes and I'm
leaning into it, and with this one I can really feel that muscle pull into the
back leg, the glute, and the low back. It just takes a lot of tension off that
sciatic nerve and can prevent a lot of future issues. So with this next one, we
need a chair with two arms on it and it needs to be sturdy (no wheels). This is
a very good exercise that's going to target disc bulges, disc herniations in
the lumbar spine. So think pinched nerves from a disc bulge. We're going to sit at
the edge of the chair, good upright posture, and then we're going to put our
legs out straight, feet together, and then just simply lift up as far as you're
able to go. With this one, gravity is going to help us by just taking our
bodyweight and forcing it down. This helps naturally decompress the low
back, and then you're just going to relax, and then you're just gonna keep doing it
until you feel a little bit of pressure being taken off low back.The nice
thing is too, is this is kind of like a dip exercise, so you'll probably get a
little bit of an arm workout with it. But very, very simple way to decompress the
low back, give it a try. So this last stretch is going to be a piriformis
stretch. The piriformis muscle (with some people) actually has an opening through
it in which the sciatic nerve travels. You can kind of imagine, if we're sitting
on it all day long, it's going to compress that nerve causing a lot of
sciatic like symptoms. We actually call this pseudo sciatica. So I take the
affected side, in this case it's my right side. I'm going to bring that leg up over
so the ankle is sitting right by the knee. We're not going to press into this
one. I think a lot of people are accustomed to pressing into it to get
this piriformis stretch. This one, instead, we're going to use our upper body weight
and then lean into it, and the more that you lean into it you're really going to
feel a good stretch. This one really targets more around the hip area, the
glute or buttock area, and I like to hold this one 30 seconds. Come back up and
then just keep repeating it, three to five times or as much times as you need
it until you finally feel that pressure taken off the hip area, buttock area, and
also off that sciatic nerve.
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