Sciatica is the most common disease of modern world. Unfortunately in many cases it may become chronic. When it is so, the pain becomes unbearable torture and it becomes more complicated to bring relief to your pain. It’s not a secret that sciatica is not a diagnosis, it’s a symptom. The main cause of sciatica is spinal abnormality. You should know that there is also such notion as pseudo-sciatica, and it may appear due to circulatory, muscular, or psychosomatic reasons. But if we are talking about chronic sciatica it actually doesn’t matter what is the real cause of sciatica.
Chronic means that the symptoms last long and that they may appear from time to time. As a matter of fact, the sciatica symptoms are mainly individual. The same is with the chronic form of this symptom: the chronic patterns may differ a lot. For example, some patients may experience the same pain each day, why others have different symptoms. Sometimes the symptoms may even change hour to hour. One patients experience constant pain, while others have days without pain. All this cases are named in medicine as “flare ups”. Actually they are the main issue which the sufferers mainly name as one of the main problems of sciatica. The main reason why sciatic nerve symptoms appear is a herniated lumbar disc. Unfortunately, this reason is hard to diagnose. To the best of our knowledge in this case, the disc presses upon the nerve that goes below as well as surrounding neurological tissues through the processes of foraminal or spinal stenosis. It’s not a secret that the discs themselves do not feel pain, because they do not have nerve endings or blood supply.
So let’s look closer at these both cases of stenosis. First of all, foraminal stenosis means that there are herniated discs. The discs in its turn pinch sciatic nerves and this compression of the nerve roots may cause sciatica pain. According to official researches, the compressed nerves stop providing signals, so there appear numbness and weakness in the areas where affected nerve is. The pain or tingling wouldn’t last long, as well as weakness and numbness. So it is incredible that this pinched nerve theory is a true cause of sciatica. Besides, if a herniated disc affected the nerve in any way, the bulge should completely close off the neuroforaminal space. In real life it is almost impossible.
If to talk about spinal stenosis, it is more complicated. Alongside with the typical neurological symptoms in the legs, stenosis may create different pain pattern. It is also rather difficult to set a diagnosis. The main problem here is that stenosis do not normally has common symptoms though anatomical alteration is evident. The thing is that herniated discs may affect the surrounding of the spinal cord, but do not have any effect on the cord itself. If you want to detect the true picture, than make MRI.
To learn more about sciatica and sciatic nerve pain in particular – please visit this site with helpful sciatica-related info.
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