Being a chiropractor in Freehold, NJ, I see patients from most of Monmouth County and other parts of the state that suffer with sciatica. After treatments with medications, rest, and physical therapy the problem persists because these treatments do not get to the cause of the sciatica the majority of the time.
Dr. Tyler Baker, Omaha Chiropractor, wrote a great blog about what sciatica pain is and some possible treatment options. If you have pain that shoots down your leg, experience numbness or tingling in your leg or foot, have weakness in your legs or even soreness and pain by your butt, you could be experiencing sciatica. I highly recommend Dr. Baker’s Omaha Chiropractic Blog and his post: Sciatica Pain and Treatment
Medication at best will just cover up the pain of sciatica, but it will not correct it. Taking medication is like if you went to the dentist for a toothache or painful cavity and the doctor said for you to take some pain medication and anti-inflammatories but not treat the cavity. You know that the cavity would continue to decay and get worse, eventually needing drastic procedures to fix what could’ve been prevented in the first place. Yet, this is the way most doctors treat patients and you follow their lead.
Physical therapy has a slightly higher success in treating the sciatica as many times the PT will first do some therapies like electric stimulation or ultrasound to ease the pain and decrease the swelling, then do some stretching to loosen the muscles and probably finish with some strengthening exercises to try to stabilize the area. Short term this gives relief bu this in long term can cause problems as the underlying cause is still not being corrected and doing these exercises will just splint the area in the imbalanced position. The problem will further degenerate years down the road.
Chiropractors look for the cause of the problem. Many look for misalignments called subluxations, where the vertebra move out of place, putting pressure on the nerve, therefor causing the symptoms of pain, numbness and tingling, and leg weakness. These bones moving out of place can cause a herniated disc, swelling and degeneration in the long run. By performing chiropractic adjustments, chiropractors reposition the bones of the spine to remove the pressure on the nerve, thereby getting to the cause of the problem.
In our office at Hometown Family Wellness Center, we take a multi-pronged approach to not only find the cause, but many times the surrounding muscles of the spine and legs are out of balance and will pull the bones back out of place. While adjusting the spine, we also perform therapeutic activities to those supporting soft tissues: hamstrings, quadriceps and piriformis muscles in the legs, as well as the paravertebral muscles of the spine. This overall approach, gets the optimal results, as our goal is to get you out of pain and enjoying your normal activities.
Would you like your health professional to find the cause of your back pain and sciatica so you can enjoy your normal daily activities and time with friends and family? Would you like to finally live without the pain and prevent future problems?
If you answer yes to these questions, live in Freehold or the surrounding towns of Marlboro, Manalapan, Englishtown, Morganville, Colts Neck, Howell, Millstone or Jackson, NJ, contact Hometown Family Wellness Center to get on the road to recovery as soon as possible.
For those near Omaha Nebraska, I highly recommend Dr. Baker:
Tyler Baker, D.C
Active Motion Chiropractic
13027 Arbor Street
(402) 334-2244