Chiropractic Elk Grove

Ok, I am going to talk about this again because it keeps on coming up.  It keeps on coming through the door.  If you think you have sciatic pain or you’ve been told that you do by your medical doctor I am going to tell you what to do to help get rid of the pain.  I have shared on an individual basis with some of you that come in complaining of it.  I thought I would share it with more/with as many that want to read about it.  Some people have true sciatica while others might have a problem with their piriformis and have piriformis syndrome.  The piriformis muscle sits in the middle of each buttock.  This is how it can appear on either side.  The muscles starts at the sacrum (a part of your spine) and ends (attaches to) the top of the femur (what you may call the hip bone or top of leg bone).  This muscles function is to rotate our leg out.  If we do this action too much, possibly because our hips are rotated, the muscle begins to tighten up.  The sciatic nerve does make this muscle move.  The nerve takes different paths in each one of us.  For some of us the sciatic nerve may go over, under or through the muscle.  Under normal conditions the nerve should innervate (give instruction to the muscle to move) and move on past it to innervate other muscles lower down in the leg.  If the muscle is too tight, abnormally functioning, the nerve with act up by giving us that signal of radiating pain down our leg.  You should still go to see a chiropractor to get your hips straightened out so that the muscle doesn’t continue to tighten up.  There is something you could do to the muscle to “calm” it down, stretch it out and keep the pain from returning.  This is how you do it:  Start with lying on your back.  If the pain is primarily on the right side.  Cross the right leg over your left, placing your right ankle on the upper part of your left knee, creating a figure four.  Then bend your left knee bringing your left knee (that is carrying your right ankle and leg) up to your chest.  The best part I have found to hang on to (for best results) is pulling the left bent knee towards yourself with both hands by placing hands on top of that knee or if you can between that same bent knee.  I hope you understand what I am trying to describe here.  You can look up stretches of piriformis muscle, I am sure, by now on YouTube for a visual.  If it still doesn’t make sense come in and I’ll show you.  This can keep the pain away for some of you at least until you can get in next to get adjusted.  We really do want you out there living a happy healthy life. 

Stretch,

Dr. Munoz