Sciatica is pain that starts in your buttock and runs down the back of your thigh and continues down the back and side of your leg and foot.
It usually occurs from pressure on the nerve from a disc herniation.
The severity of the pain can vary from mild to excruciating.
The quickest, first thing you can do is to take an anti-inflammatory medication and to put ice on it.
DO NOT USE HEAT on the source of pain because it will increase the inflammation.
The next thing to consider is to see a doctor to determine if an x-ray or MRI scan is advisable.
Then a course of physical therapy or chiropractic is in order.
I would advise against receiving forceful twisting of your low back as a means of treatment.
Instead, I recommend a course of traction or, better yet, spinal decompression- a more sophisticated version, which may work better.
These treatments work by stretching your discs, reducing the pressure within the discs, getting more water, oxygen and nutrients into the disc and reducing compression and inflammation of the sciatic nerve roots.
This treatment will generally be combined with exercises as soon as the patient can tolerate them.
Patient education about their spine, postures and activities should accompany treatment and be reinforced numerous times.
Even if patients improve 100%, they should remain thoughtful about how they do their postures and activities, forever after.
Sometimes physical therapy, spinal decompression and chiropractic won't suffice to resolve the problem.
If the pain fails to improve sufficiently, patients may choose to try injections of cortisone, such as epidural steroid injections.
These are sometimes very effective for the nerve root inflammation that causes sciatica pain.
For patients who don't want to receive an injection, they can try a six-day dose of cortisone, which is sometimes effective.
I refer about 8% of my patients for these injections, because most of the time, spinal decompression will suffice to sufficiently improve the pain.