Do You Have Sciatica Or is the Pain in Your Hip and Leg Caused by Your Piriformis Muscle?

Do you really have sciatica or is something else causing your sciatic pain?

There are far fewer back surgeries performed today than there used to be. Why? The reason is because so many times after surgery patients still had the same pain. It didn't go away.

It is possible to have surgical treatment for "sciatica" and still have the same symptoms afterward.

This happens when the diagnosis for the cause of the pain is incorrect. Muscles are the most common cause for this type of pain and they are also the most commonly overlooked or ignored cause.

Sometimes a person truly does need surgery. But surgery should always be a last resort. Once a body part is removed or fused or altered it's changed forever. And if it doesn't cure your problem it makes it harder for natural methods to succeed. Maybe not impossible, just harder.

Probably the biggest problem with surgery for sciatica is that it's only addressing the immediate symptom. It's not addressing the muscle imbalances that probably caused the problem in the first place.

When your muscles are "out of balance" you get into pain. That's why you didn't have pain when you were an active child; you were using ALL of your muscles then. And that's why you have pain now; you aren't using them all anymore. You might not move much these days, right?

Maybe you're thinking, "Of course, I don't move much: I have pain!" On the other hand, it is very possible that the reason you have pain is because--just maybe--perhaps--you weren't moving very much to begin with.

You see, when your muscles are out of balance (some overused, some underused) they pull your spine out of the position it is supposed to be in. This includes your leg muscles. Your bones can press on your sciatic nerve.

Did you realize that just about everything that happens in your body has a cause? If you fall, you get a cut or bruise or broken bone. The reason was because you fell. Cause and effect.

Get rid of the cause and you can change the effect or symptom.

So if you really want to get lasting relief from sciatica, the very first thing you must do is figure out which muscles are out of balance and causing your pain. Muscles cause sciatic-type pain more than bones do. And the second thing to do is to treat those muscles and get them back to a balanced, neutral position.

I remember years ago when I was a new massage therapist. An elderly woman came in complaining of "sciatica." As soon as I placed my hand on the gluteal (buttock) muscles on the side she complained about, I could feel the very hard piriformis muscle. It was tight!

She had sciatic pain for almost 20 years. She didn't have it anymore when she left.

It was her piriformis muscle pressing on the sciatic nerve. No one had ever helped her before. And it was only muscles. They just didn't know.

When the piriformis muscle in the buttock presses on the sciatic nerve, it is called "piriformis syndrome" or "pseudosciatica" or "false sciatica."

Treating the muscle to cause it to relax took the pressure off the nerve. So logical. Bodies are logical.

When your muscles get back to normal and neutral, your pain can go away. But you have to keep your muscles that way. If you fall back into the same postures or habits that caused your pain in the first place...well, you will probably get it again.

Are you going to have to do some work to get rid of your pain? Yes. But what's the option? I'd rather see you have natural relief of your sciatica or piriformis syndrome. You, too, right?