Sciatica

Every day in my office, people are
talking about sciatica. I think I have
sciatica. And I wanted to kind of clear
up some misconceptions about sciatica.
And I actually got a new poster in my
office that’s going to help us do it.
So, if you take a look at this poster,
you’ve got your spine coming down and
your spinal cord and all the nerves that
branch off and then it becomes the
sciatic nerve. This big thick nerve.
It’s actually as big as my thumb and it
comes down the back of the leg.
So, if you look at me, it’s going to
come out from here and it goes down the
back of the leg. And here’s how it would
present. Someone with sciatica, a lot of
times they’re going to have back pain.
Sometimes they don’t, but typically they
might lean like this and ah, it bites
and shoots down their leg like a
lightning bolt, okay? Not an aching leg.
People come in sometimes and they have a
a little bit of a hamstring strain and
they think it’s sciatica. Another thing
is people come in and they have groin
pain or they have pain down the front of
the leg and they think it’s sciatica.
That’s a totally different nerve. That’s
not sciatica. Sciatica is only down the
back of the leg. Another distinction I
want to make, if you come back over to
my poster, if you look up here, this is
called your ilium or some people call it
big hipbone and it forms a joint with
the sacrum. And this is called your
sacroiliac joint. sometimes called an SI
joint. And what happens with this?
Because that word
sacroiliac sounds like sciatica.
Everybody confuses that. But they’re
totally different. They require
different type of treatment. And so we
want to kind of make a clear
distinction. I don’t expect you to
basically diagnose yourself, but there’s
some information there that can help
distinguish whether you have sciatica or
not. If you or anyone you know think you
have sciatica, have a back, anything,
have a neck, anything, you call us.
We’re in Delray Beach and we are on a
mission to help you feel your