Slipped discs, spinal stenosis and degenerative discs are three examples of back related pain that you might feel in your legs. Each falls under the category of “sciatica” due to the connection with the longest nerve in your body – the sciatic nerve.
A new study shows a combination of chiropractic care and home exercises can help you find relief for your back related leg pain.
Whether your leg pain tingles, burns or flares up when you move, you want to find relief. Here are three common back troubles that chiropractic care may help.
Slipped or Herniated Discs
There are 23 discs that run the length of your spinal column. When one is damaged and no longer in alignment, it puts pressure on the nerve that lies beneath it. That pressure hurts and leads to pain traveling down your sciatic nerve and into your leg.
You can try some simple forward and backward bends like these to help you find relief as well as chiropractic treatments to realign your spine. Here’s how chiropractic treatments help.
Spinal stenosis
Imagine your spine with the knobby bits at the base of the spinal column. Those are called “facet joints” and as you age, they can enlarge. When they get bigger, they squeeze the nearby nerves and that hurts both in your lower back and in your legs.
Sometimes, you’ll feel relief when you sit in a chair and lean forward. That posture takes some of the pressure off those nerves. Swimming and walking can both help relieve the pain. This is also called radiculopathy.
Degenerative discs
Aging does terrible things to our bodies, one of them is drying up our spinal discs (which before moved about with no trouble in their body of water.) They also become less flexible. The combination leads to degeneration and pain when you move.
Stabilizing exercises like yoga’s “bridge” pose can help. To practice it, lie on the floor on your back. Bend your knees so your feet are flat on the floor and your fingertips could touch your heels if you reached down. Then, raise your behind and lower back off the floor as high as you can, you’ll be balancing on your feet and upper back. Hold the posture for 3-8 seconds and slowly lower back down.
In conjunction with chiropractic care, many exercises can help you find relief from back related leg pain. Are you in the Doylestown area? Give us a call or stop by our office, we’d love to help you.
