Sciatica is shooting pain, numbness, or tingling that travels from your low back or buttock down the leg. It happens when the sciatic nerve, or one of its roots, gets irritated or compressed. The leg symptoms are the headline, but the source is almost always in the low back or hip.
We find what is actually irritating the nerve, a disc, a tight deep hip muscle, a stuck joint, and treat that, while calming the nerve so you can move and sleep again.
Finding the real source of the nerve pain
Sciatic symptoms can come from a disc pressing on a nerve root, from a tight piriformis muscle deep in the hip squeezing the nerve, or from joints in the low back that have locked up. Each one needs a different approach, so the first job is figuring out which is driving yours.
Our exam maps where your symptoms travel and what makes them better or worse. That tells us the source, so we are treating the cause of the irritation, not just chasing the pain down your leg.
How we treat sciatica
- Hands-on work to take pressure off the irritated nerve
- Dry needling and soft-tissue release for a tight, compressing hip
- Class IV laser to calm nerve-related inflammation
- Specific rehab that decompresses and stabilizes the low back