Sciatica Exercise Therapy

Sciatica exercise therapy is one of the most widely utilized modalities for treating chronic lower back and leg pain syndromes. There are many different types of exercise treatments applied by professional care givers and even more used casually by patients at home. Although exercise is a necessary part of a healthy and happy lifestyle, it is not always the best method of care for back pain sufferers, although it can be a powerful diagnostic tool in some cases.

Professional exercise therapy for sciatica generally consists of physical therapy or personal training sessions. There may be a great number of exercises used in these practices, ranging from resistance programs to cardiovascular conditioning to aquatherapy to targeted isometric work. The theory which drives most physical therapy programs is that there is some injury, abnormality or weakness in the anatomy which is causing the pain. Therefore, enhancing the physical condition of the entire person and building the strength and integrity of the affected area and support structures should relieve the symptoms over time. Now for definitive injuries which cause sciatica, or as a rehabilitation program after said injury or post-surgery, there is perhaps no better method of care than physical therapy. However, for the typical sciatica patient with chronic pain, PT rarely does anything more than provide temporary symptomatic relief, but in some cases may actually aggravate symptoms to a mild or major degree.

Self-applied exercise therapy for sciatica is also very common. Patients use a variety of activities to get in a good lower back and leg workout in the hopes that they are increasing their strength and helping to heal any weaknesses or injuries which are sourcing their agony. The theory here mirrors that used in professional physical therapy, basically blaming all manner of symptoms on a known or unknown structural issue. Patients may decide to walk, run or swim as the most popular options in sciatica exercise care. However, many other methods also may be helpful, including yoga practice, tai chi and Pilates, to name a few.

While it is true that exercise rarely heals sciatica pain in chronic sufferers, it may be part of the diagnostic process. This is a consideration rarely utilized by doctors, but has been shown to be very enlightening by such world renown back pain care providers as Dr. John Sarno. Exercise will not change the spinal anatomy and will do nothing to actually heal herniated discs, spinal arthritis or spinal curvature issues. These are the most frequently implicated structural reasons used to explain sciatica to begin with. Exercise will increase regional blood flow, and therefore oxygen saturation, of affected painful tissues. When a patient sees a marked, but temporary, benefit from sciatica exercise, it is logical to suspect that ischemia, not a structural issue, is actually responsible for the pain. In these cases, Dr. Sarno theorizes that any structural issues found via MRI or CT scan are coincidental, which completely supports modern research telling that most spinal abnormalities are not responsible for pain. Instead, the oxygen deprivation is causing the widespread and treatment-resistant symptoms due to its effects on the muscles, nerves, tendons, ligaments and other tissues of the body. To make matters worse, these ischemic sciatica pain syndromes are almost always driven by a psychogenic process, further explaining why they are so difficult to resolve using conventional, or even alternative, treatment options.

It should be noted that patients who feel an escalation of pain when active typically fall into one of 2 possible categories. The first may have known or unknown structural issues which are not being treated correctly and still need to be accurately diagnosed. Once found, most of the issues can be successfully resolved using medical care. The other type of patient is one who has built up a back pain conditioning characteristic in which exercise is perceived to be causative for pain, even though it is not creating any problematic anatomical stress. This can complicate the diagnosis of psychosomatic sciatica, but the truth can still be ascertained by physicians trained in recognizing the other common symptoms of this epidemic health condition.