July 30, 2009

Getting the best sciatic nerve treatment

Once you realize that the pain you are experiencing is due to your sciatic nerve, it is important to seek medical attention immediately. A complete check-up can educate you as to the severity of your condition. Sometimes the pain associated with sciatica can be linked with other medical conditions. So it’s important to explain your symptoms in detail to your doctor so that a correct diagnosis can be made and you can be given the best course of treatment.

Sciatica nerve pain can be treated in many ways. The type of sciatic nerve treatment will depend highly on what type of condition you have. Most commonly a doctor will suggest to you to go for physical therapy, especially if you show symptoms of a herniated disk. To help reduce the pain and discomfort, doctors may give you pain killers and anti-inflammatory medicines. Some of these prescribed drugs have bad side effects and that is why such specific drugs should not be taken for a long time by one patient. The intake should be monitored and be taken for just a short period of time.

If your sciatica pain is severe, your doctor may recommend injections of steroids in your back. These treatments can often be very effective in reducing pressure on the nerve by quieting down inflammation. Steroids can be a powerful healing tool as well, but because they can be dangerous if prescribed in excess, you can receive only three treatments per year. However, often their effects do not last long enough to relieve pain for the entire year.

Surgery is another alternative that may be suggested to you. This is the most aggressive and invasive procedure for treating Sciatica nerve pain. Hence, it is usually perceived as the last choice. Generally, it is considered only in very severe cases where the patient shows numbness in the back of legs or failure of bladder and bowel control. Here, as the situation is very grave, surgery is the only alternative. Though, in many cases, the patients may experience alleviation of Sciatica nerve pain after operation, a complete cure is seldom achieved. Many people who have undergone surgery complain of other problems arising out of it. Hence, it is crucial to consider this alternative cautiously before selecting it.

Indeed, Sciatica Nerve Pain is considered a very serious condition; therefore it is wise to see your doctor as soon as possible. What initially starts with numbness in the legs and lower back, can lead, if untreated, to a potential loss in leg movement, eventually leading to a complete loss of bladder and bowel control. It is not uncommon for those suffering with the early symptoms to assume the pain is due to muscular inflammation, and so assume that OTC medication will help to relieve, and eventually cure, their condition. However, treated in this manner, the condition can leave sufferers with irreversible nerve damage.

There is never a single way of treatment for Sciatic Nerve Pain. It may depend upon the severity. First and foremost is to reduce inflammation and pain with drugs. Another form is acupuncture which is highly successful as well. So you can choose the treatment which suits you best.

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Spinal Decompression Or Back Surgery?

People suffering from back pain and/or sciatica related to a bulging or degenerated spinal disc often have difficulty getting lasting relief, and they may be left with considering the options of spinal decompression or back surgery. While each has it’s benefits and drawbacks, different factors in different cases will ultimately determine the best treatment option.

Unfortunately, there are several misconceptions concerning both spinal decompression and back surgery that can make it very difficult for one to choose a treatment approach, particularly when one’s judgement may be clouded by pain and/or pain medication. The purpose of this article is to attempt to cut through some of the myths and misconceptions concerning these forms of disc treatment to assist disc pain sufferers in making an informed decision as to the form of treatment to pursue.

Spinal decompression is an advanced form of traction, but it has very different effects on the spinal discs than regular traction. Due to computer-controlled motors, true spinal decompression systems can “trick” the muscles along the spine into staying relaxed during treatment, allowing for the creation of a suction force within the disc that pulls bulging disc material back inward and also enhances disc hydration and nutrition that will subsequently promote disc healing. Because regular traction systems must fight the muscles, there is far less of an effect on the disc, and regular traction is usually insufficient to produce any long-term relief of disc-related pain.

While spinal decompression is highly successful in treating most cases of disc-related pain, it is not 100% effective and there are situations in which it is contraindicated. In my San Antonio Spinal Decompression practice, it has been my experience that it is usually not very effective when a patient has a severe disc extrusion, or a full rupture of the disc, rather than just bulging. Spinal decompression is not safe to use when the patient has spinal instability in the are of the damaged disc. In cases where spinal decompression is unlikely to be effective and/or is contraindicated, surgery becomes the only real option for achieving good lasting results.

Although it may be the best option in a small number of disc-pain cases, back surgery is far from being an ideal solution. Patients sometimes have the impression that a back surgery will completely solve their back pain once and for all, but this is rarely the case. Statistics have shown that a prior back surgery is one of the most telling predictors of whether a person will need back surgery in the future. Even though an aggressive back surgery to remove a damaged disc will ensure that the removed disc will never cause a problem again, such a surgery will typically create future problems that can be as bad or worse than the initial disc problem.

Post-surgical scar tissue and increased wear and tear on adjacent discs can conspire to create new areas of spinal cord and/or spinal nerve compression months or years after spinal surgery. For this reason, it is my opinion that spinal surgery should be reserved as a last resort when all other treatments (including spinal decompression) have failed or have otherwise been ruled out.

For a FREE report with additional information on spinal decompression and back surgery, visit the San Antonio Spinal Decompression website.

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July 27, 2009

What to do if you are suffering from back problems

One of the most common problems that people suffer from these days is back problems. Back disability will affect almost every single person on this planet at one time or another. Physicians will report that lower back problems account for a lot of the visits to the surgery, the fifth most common complaint. The fact that a lot of people think that there is not much that can be done for their backs is part of the problem. If you have back issues then you can have big problems. You can be severely restricted in your work, or even lose your job. Your sporting career can be severely curtailed or indeed may have to be stopped altogether. If you cannot do the same things that your friends can do your social life will be restricted. Another part of your life that may suffer is your sex life. Can you do anything to help this problem?

If you can prevent is better than curing

You might find that taking a back workout is going to either solve or prevent back problems from occurring. You should go to the gym because this way you can get supervised help to workout every muscle in your back. You come workout every single individual muscle group as a separate entity. In order to gain all the natural poise and healthy balance that you need you must regularly work out your back. When you are a novice you should go easy at the beginning of your upper back workout as your stamina and strength increase you can increase the weight that you are bearing accordingly.

What about products like True Back?

True Back is a product that claims to be able to help you ease the difficulties of back problem. There are many advertisements, especially on the TV, which highlight the advantages of using this system. There is no power used in this traction device for your back. There are many reviews on the Internet about True Blue. You can catch the video about this product on YouTube.

Get some medical advice

Get down to your physician and tell him what you intend to do before you start an exercise program or try out a new product.

A back workout should be virtually pain-free.

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