When you're dealing with back pain that stems from a herniated disc and/or sciatica, life can become a sort of awkward dance.
Since certain movements lead to jolts of pain, you need to find ways to avoid them. For some, even standing up straight can lead to stabbing pain in the lower back, as well as down into the buttocks and legs.
So if you’re among the millions of Americans dealing with sciatica — which has a lifetime prevalence of 10%-40% — or a herniated disc, you can find relief in the form of a nerve block.
As experts in pain management and spine health, our team at Pain Medicine Consultants makes it their business to provide effective solutions for painful conditions like sciatica and herniated discs.
And one of our hardest-working and most effective remedies is the nerve block.
One of the main reasons nerve blocks work so well in the world of sciatica and herniated discs is because these conditions involve nerve entrapment.
Your spine contains your spinal canal, which is the main passageway that connects your central nervous system with your peripheral nervous system. To create much of your peripheral nervous system, 31 pairs of nerve roots exit your spine, from your neck down to your low back.
With sciatica, something presses against some of the nerve roots and fibers around your spine, which is what causes the local pain, as well as the pain that travels down your sciatic nerve into your buttock and leg.
This something is often a herniated or bulging disc — 90% of cases of sciatica are traced back to a lumbar herniated disc. Under normal circumstances, your discs are confined to an intervertebral space. If the disc degenerates, pieces of it can escape this space and irritate nearby nerves.
With most cases of sciatica, the herniated disc does heal and the inflammation and nerve compression gradually subside. But it can be a painful journey that can last 4-6 weeks, on average.
While over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen can help, they’re limited in how much relief they can bring. If ibuprofen isn’t doing the trick and you struggle to move, a nerve block might be a good option.
We offer a couple different types of nerve blocks, including:
When the nerve roots leave the spinal canal, they pass through the epidural space in your spine. If there are several nerve tissues that are sending pain signals, we can inject a steroid and local anesthetic into the epidural space where the nerves are located.
This nerve block not only quiets the pain signaling, it tackles the inflammation that’s causing the nerve compression.
If we can identify the exact nerve root that’s sending the pain signaling, we can target it with a selective nerve root block that contains an anesthetic and steroid.
We’ve had great success with both of these nerve block solutions, which can deliver results that last for weeks, if not months, and even a year or more for some.
To see for yourself how effective nerve blocks can be in the face of sciatica and herniated discs, we urge you to sit down with one of experts. To get that ball rolling, we invite you to contact one of our offices in Pleasant Hill, Corte Madera, or Pleasanton, California, to schedule an appointment.
