How I defeated my sciatica

Sciatica is TOUGH! No joke about it. If you have been there, you know but if you haven't, you really don't know. But don't let yourself ever get there! Seriously, take precautions and take care of your spine!!

WATCH YOUR POSTURE! Every day. While you are walking, while you are standing in line, while you are jumping! Tighten that core and take care of your spine!

I was talking to a friend just last week about his sciatica and it hit me, a lot of people are dealing with this problem right now! WHY!?

First off, let's take a look at how we live our daily lives. 

Sitting in our car that has no back support for hours at a time, sitting in a desk chair with no back support ALL DAY and then coming home and sitting on our couch with NO BACK SUPPORT EITHER.. this is becoming a problem and we need to face it, now!

We need to help each other to change our life styles around to live a long and healthy life.

With this all being said I want to get it out there HOW I DEFEATED MY SCIATICA.

And by all means, "defeated" is a loose term here. Sciatica is something that a ton of people (including myself) will have to deal with throughout our lives but we can make sure that the flare ups stay at bay and that we protect our spine to not cause anymore damage. 

When I started seeing my chiropractor 2 months ago now, I was unaware of how important your spine is to your health. In my first blog, I state this "Your spinal age is more important than your real age." Take that to heart, please!

You see, our spine affects our entire body. Intertwined with millions of nerves and ligaments and connected to huge muscles that travel throughout our body. Our spinal cord sends messages throughout the body and when our spine isn't getting the movement that it needs those signals are being disrupted. 

First thing I did was found out what was causing my sciatica. This is important if you want to defeat it because not knowing the root cause can evidently end up hurting you more, much more. So go get x-rays done and see what the chiropractor says, see what your doctor says. And again, like I've said in my first blog, you should be picky about the doctor you are going to see. Read reviews, make sure that you are comfortable with them because they need you to be relaxed to make it the most beneficial and there are also chiropractors out there that you should be a little wary about.

Second thing was to set up a treatment plan. Depending on how long this problem has been neglected will depend on how long your treatment is. I had an injury last September, a heavy fence fell on my lower back and I didn't do anything about it for 8 months. So my treatment ended up being a more extensive plan of 7 weeks.

Third thing, be ready to put in the work. I didn't just lay around all day waiting to be magically healed. I did a ton of research on sciatica and spinal health and spinal discs and on and on trying to educate myself on how I can prevent further damage and help myself to heal from this injury. 

Last thing is to get to work! Get yourself moving, find what movements feel good and what doesn't. Start slowly and week by week add in more of what works for you. 

The month before I went to see my doctor about my sciatica, I thought I could heal myself. I thought doing yoga alone would help me get better. I did yoga for sciatica and lower back pain, which a lot of the moves did help but the underlying problem was actually getting worse. So I stopped doing my daily yoga and only worked on very simple poses that felt good for me.

I needed to get my spine adjusted so that it would go back into it's natural position. The muscles in my back had all sorts of inflammation as well so therapeutic massages were a blessing! As well as adding Turmeric into my daily diet.

I also added in premium fish oil to my diet and upped my dosage of vitamin D. All very good for healing the body. 

One of the most important things to remember while dealing with sciatica is to keep moving! Doctors can not stress this enough and it's because sitting for long periods of time really affects how our body works and causes flare ups in sciatica. 

When the spine isn't moving enough the discs start to absorb fluids which causes them to become tight and can lead to injury. When we move our spine in ways that feel good those discs release the fluids and become more mobile. 

Also when sitting all day the muscles in our thighs and gluts tighten up and become shorter, causing one side to pull on certain muscles and making our alignment uneven. This is why doing yoga or daily stretches are important, they help stretch out those muscles that have been tightened.


Here is how the first few weeks of my treatment went:

Week one:  I was in a lot of pain so I didn't do much besides getting my first adjustment with the chiropractor but I worked on this pose: This is called baby cobra. Lay flat on your stomach (at first this was even hard to bare!) then slowly put your hands under your shoulders and start to lift your head and chest upwards, making sure to keep the neck a part of your spine, relax and do this pose in repetitions 5-10 times every hour. Be sure to move slowly and consciously. I did this every day, every hour or as much as needed and within a week the tingling in my legs completely vanished. I also did these poses which I found helped a lot. 

Week two: My pain had subsided quite a bit and so I was able to move onto doing more complex poses and I advance to cobra then rolling through my neck and spine to bring my body and head back to the floor. Do repetitions of 5-10 just like before. I did this as a strengthener for my spine and back muscles and it felt incredible as well! I also added in these poses. He talks about letting your body hang using a chin up bar and this helped so much! As well as legs up the wall. This week I was also able to start my therapy massages, which I highly recommend for sciatica, they are not comfortable and they are awkward but they will help if you are open to them and can stay relaxed. I had to put myself in a trance like state because of how uncomfortable it was for me, but they were able to release my psoas muscles which was causing all sorts of tightness and now I am the most flexible I've ever been! Great article on the Psoas.

Week three: I was in heaven, the best I'd felt in over 2 months!! I was able to start up my regular yoga routines (with care) and live a normal, pain free life again. At this point I was still incorporating the previous poses along with some new ones. Like this one and this one. I also added in more back and core strengtheners, this is super key to helping prevent further damage. Core is important but be sure to stay away from sit-ups as they can be hard on your lower back. Instead do more planks and side planks, you can should do these daily. Great for your back and core! 

My last bit of information I want to share with you is to start thinking of your body as one, all connected and working together. This helps to understand the body as a whole and how we can strengthen it and prevent damage. 

And very last but should be first is remembering to breath. The breath is so powerful once you learn how to use it correctly. I highly recommend looking into pranayama, breath control. And if you don't want to or don't have the time, just being more conscious about the breath, remembering to take big inhalations and exhalations. Especially if you are a smoker, practicing breath control will benefit you immensely! Do so right after you smoke, wake up or before and after an exercise. Fresh air feeds our blood new oxygen and helps circulate through our entire body.   

Take care guys and please reach out with any questions or comments. Much love.