Sciatica Treatment

Sciatic Treatment: Using a unique combination of diet to decrease inflammation, physical therapy to relax tight muscles, chiropractic to remove irritation to the nerve and acupuncture/laser/or pulsed magnet therapy to also decrease pain and improve healing we can address these issues quickly and effectively.

Sciatica treatment anyone?  Who would think that one nerve could cause such severe pain? Pressure on the sciatic nerve can force even the biggest badest person to seek sciatica treatment.

Sciatica gets its name from the large sciatic nerve that runs from your low back down your leg. Sciatica is defined as pain that comes from anywhere along the course of the sciatic nerve.

Many patients think it may be odd that we look at your low back for sciatic treatment when you have pain along the back of your legs, but we’re always looking for the cause. Using a unique combination of diet to decrease inflammation, physical therapy to relax tight muscles, chiropractic to remove irritation to the nerve and acupuncture or laser therapy to also decrease pain and improve healing we can address these issues quickly and effectively. Once we find the cause of the problem and fix it, you won’t have to worry about your back going into spasm or having sciatic pain 6 months later, which is the difference between this and anti-inflammatory medications.

More information on Chiropractic Sciatica Treatment versus Surgery for sciatica treatment

Pain coming from compression or irritation of the sciatic nerve is called sciatica. Symptoms may not always include pain, it can be tingling, numbness and muscle weakness as well.

This article will explore in detail the findings of a recent controlled study comparing spinal manipulation (chiropractic) and surgery for people whose sciatica did not respond to traditional medical treatment approaches.

The study discussed here was conducted by the National Spine Center in Alberta Canada and published in October of 2010 in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics[1]. The 40 study participants all had sciatica lasting over 3 months which had not responded to treatment with pain medications, lifestyle modifications, physical therapy, or massage therapy. They had all been referred by their primary care physicians to spinal surgeons who had deemed them appropriate surgery candidates.

Instead of having all of the patients proceed with surgery, they were split into two groups – one group to undergo a surgical microdiscectomy and the other group to be treated with standardized chiropractic spinal manipulation by a single chiropractor. (If not satisfied with the results they obtained from their assigned method, the patients were allowed to switch to the other treatment plan after 3 months.)

So what happened? Both groups made significant improvements over baseline scores – which means they saw noticeable improvements whereas previous approaches had failed. A full 60% of the study participants benefited from chiropractic spinal manipulation to the SAME degree as if they underwent surgery. And, after 1 year there was no difference in outcome success based on the treatment method. That means that a full 60% of people referred for surgery by their primary care physicians and accepted as surgical candidates by the neurosurgeon could actually get similar results with chiropractic. That is a lot of potentially unnecessary cutting, anesthesia and ER time.   After 1 year, there was no difference in the outcome success, so 1 year after, the optimal results were the same.

There is one paragraph in the results section of this study that is easy to overlook, but incredibly important. There were originally 120 candidates of which 60 met the study criteria and were asked to participate. Of these 60, 20 refused. Why? Because they had never been offered spinal manipulation as an alternative to surgery! They didn’t want to participate in the study and be randomly placed in the surgery group without first trying the spinal manipulation!   This shows that people understand the risk of surgery, even if it is a “microdiscectomy” and it also demonstrates the insufficient knowledge of chiropractic care for sciatica treatment and lower back pain cases from the public and medical doctors as well.   The primary care doctors didn’t even think to refer these sciatica cases to a chiropractor before they were sent for surgery.

This was the first study to ever look at people who had failed traditional medical management of sciatica. Currently most patients that fail ‘conservative care’ are referred for a surgical evaluation. Now we know that 60% of these folks could avoid surgery and get similar long-term outcomes with chiropractic.  This is just one of the reasons why healthcare costs so much in this country.  The cost a microdisectomy will range from $20,000 to $50,000 depending on the case, if we assumed the average one will cost $35,000 and just 1 out of 2 people avoid surgery.  Then if you had 30 out of 60 surgeries avoided, you would save a little over one million dollars.  That still doesn’t include the rehab time after the surgery, or any other back brace orthotic.

This is just one area that the country could save billions on healthcare dollars, if mainstream medicine used all types of conservative care before surgery for sciatica treatment and other similar conditions.  The beautiful thing about conservative care is that you can blend methods together and the risk is very minimal.

For extremely difficult cases regarding sciatica treatment, Dr. Hashimoto can blend old healing arts with high tech forms of chiropractic with impulse joint stimulators, high powered lasers, pulsed magnets, spinal decompression, physical therapy, traditional forms of acupuncture and massage therapy to help the most difficult cases of lower back pain and sciatica treatment.

Please share this article with anyone considering surgery for sciatica treatment.

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