Your first experience with sciatica left you with one strong opinion about the health condition — you’d rather not repeat the experience. Sciatica is a singular type of pain that can strike your lower back and down into your legs, making moving around more than a little challenging.
The reality is that sciatica, which affects up to 40% of people at some point in their lives, also has a tendency to recur. One study found that three-year recurrence rates are 51% for leg pain and 70% per low back pain.
Given the high rates of recurrence for sciatica, our team of spine health experts at Pain Medicine Consultants wants to review some prevention strategies. In the following, we look at key practices for avoiding another bout of painful sciatica, which is one of the leading causes of back pain.
With sciatica, there’s something in your lower back that’s pressing against your sciatic nerve, which is the largest nerve in your body. This nerve starts in your lower back, then splits and travels down each of your legs, all the way to your feet.
In most cases of sciatica, irritation or compression of the nerve causes localized symptoms — namely low back pain — as well as symptoms that travel down into one side of your lower extremities.
These radiating symptoms often involve numbness and tingling that can reach down into your buttocks and legs, typically on one side only.
A good way to prevent this painful condition from recurring is to make sure that we address the underlying health issue, which often boils down to one of these:
Many of these conditions are degenerative and irreversible. That said, it’s still important to identify which one’s causing your sciatica so we can focus our efforts on better managing the condition to prevent further nerve compression.
Having one of the spine conditions we list above certainly increases your chances for getting sciatica, but you may also have some factors that place you even more at risk for this condition.
For example, one of the leading risk factors for sciatica is obesity, and this applies to about 40% of adults in the United States. When you carry extra weight, you place more pressure on your spine, which leaves you far more vulnerable to wear-and-tear and nerve compression.
Other risk factors for sciatica include:
Taking a look from a preventive angle, each of these risk factors for sciatica can be better managed so you can avoid future sciatica flare-ups.
For example, losing weight and beefing up your core muscles are two of the very best practices for promoting better spine health and can go a long way toward preventing sciatica.
If you’d like to avoid another painful round of sciatica symptoms, we can help you come up with the best plan of defense for your circumstances. This plan should address your specific risk factors and your spine health for long-term results that keep you moving without pain.
To sit down with one of our spine specialists and figure out which combination of best sciatica prevention practices are right for you, we invite you to contact one of our offices in Pleasant Hill, Corte Madera, or Pleasanton, California, to schedule an appointment.
