Spinal Decompression Therapy For Sciatica Pain
Back pain is a common discomfort that about 65 million Americans experience. Unlike sprains or muscle strains, sciatica symptoms occur with the sciatic nerve. This condition is common in many adults and gets severe with age.
What is Sciatica?
Sciatica is the pain caused by the sciatic nerve’s compression, inflammation, or irritation. The condition is followed by pain in the lower part of the back, which radiates down the back of the leg.
Symptoms of Sciatica
Sciatica symptoms aren’t the same for everyone but occur in the sciatic nerves. Pain, tingling, shock-like sensation, numbness, and muscle weakness are the most common sciatica signs. These symptoms can be mild, sporadic, intense, and persistent. Certain activities such as coughing, bending, or sneezing can worsen the pain associated with sciatica conditions.
Causes of Sciatica
A bulging disc is a leading cause of sciatica. The spine has 23 spinal discs. These discs act as shock absorbers for your spine when you move. Each disc has a jelly-like substance inside its soft inner core. It also has a thick outer layer.
Repetitive physical activities, poor posture, aging, and degenerative disc disease cause wear and tear of the discs. The wear and tear can cause a crack in the thick outer layer of the spinal disc. When this happens, it causes a crack that results in the leakage of the soft inner core. After this, a slipped, bulging, or herniated disc gets formed.
When a slipped disc compresses any nerve roots that form the sciatic nerve, it causes sciatica pains. A tumor or diabetes can also cause the condition, but it is rare. The compression of these nerves results in sciatica symptoms in the nerve. Most times, sciatica only affects one side of the body. It’s also more common among people who are obese, older, lives a sedentary lifestyle, and sit down too much because this results in poor spinal alignment.
How to treat sciatica?
Sciatica can resolve itself in a couple of weeks if you rest properly and use home care treatment and over-the-counter pain medications. However, when sciatica pain persists for a couple of months, it has become chronic sciatica. You can resolve chronic sciatica with physical therapy, prescription medications, spinal manipulation, and spinal decompression therapy. Surgery is not advisable for sciatica unless it becomes a case of a medical emergency.
What is Spinal Decompression Therapy?
Manual Spinal decompression Houston is a procedure that helps to treat sciatica. In the therapy, a trained health professional in pain management, such as an Osteopath or Chiropractor, carefully manipulates the sciatic nerves and spinal disc with the help of devices designed to work on spinal traction.
The manipulation causes the discs to take back their rightful positions and opens up the compressed sciatic nerve, enabling it to obtain vital nutrients. Sciatica pain is accompanied by inflammation resulting from the sciatic nerves’ inability to receive enough nutrients.
The Spinal Decompression Therapy Session
The spinal decompression treatment for sciatica pain requires the patients –while wearing their clothes – to lie face down on the motorized decompression table Houston. The decompression table is similar to a traction table. Still, half of this table can move, similar to the tables that Houston Texas chiropractors use for patient care routines and all kinds of spinal manipulation.
The therapist then ties a harness around the patient’s hip and affixes it to the lower part of the table. This ensures minimal body movement as the treatment is being carried out. The fixed upper part of the table and the moving lower part provides relaxation and traction for the patient who remains attached to the harness by sliding back and forth.
The therapist stretches the spine with a computer-aided machine that gently elongates the spine. It is a slow process, and the elongations create a space in the vertebrae. The newly opened space allows the disc to return to its original position. After this, the healing process begins because nutrients will start flowing through the now decompressed nerves to the area.
Spinal decompression therapy doesn’t have many risks, making it a great treatment option. However, the treatment is not for everyone. Spinal decompression therapy is not recommended for pregnant women, people with broken vertebrae suffering from osteoporosis, back conditions, spinal tumor, ankylosing, and spondylolisthesis.
Contact us or stop by Advanced Chiropractic Equipment Houston to learn more about how a spinal decompression table can help your patients achieve pain-free living.