From the desk of your local Naples Chiropractor Bradley Frick DC.
Everyone like to look up how things work. They also like to diagnose themselves from time to time to help save money. Sometimes this helps the patient to best educate themselves, and sometimes it may lead them up the garden path to the incorrect diagnosis. True sciatica is often the most over diagnosed. Anything that travels from the lower back, people will usually diagnose as ‘the sciatica’. This is often not the case. True Sciatica will travel from the lower back down the back/side of the leg and down to the foot. And there are two causes of this. Either the nerve is being pressed upon at the spinal cord or these is some type of adhesion nearby. The most common being the piriformis muscle. If the piriformis muscle is in spasm it will cause the same type of pain that a disc herniation at L5/S1 will. Other types of adhesions will occur behind the knee and in the calf.
Chiropractic can help with this with adjustments and muscle work. See the below article on WebMD on how chiropractic works. How Chiropractic Works