Sciatic Nerve Pain, let’s see if you recognize any of the below symptoms. With the help of this list you will be able to ascertain whether the pain your are suffering from is sciatica or not.
You probably already know that sciatic nerve pain is not really a condition but a description of a set of symptoms.
Here are the Symptoms of Sciatica
This is how some of our readers described their symptoms:
Shooting pain across the buttock and down the leg;
Painful feeling along the – lower – back side of the body, from the low back through the thigh, radiating down all the way below the knee, sometime also into ankle and bottom foot.;
Sharp pain, tingling radiating pains, numbness of the leg or parts of the leg, often mostly on one side of the body only.;
Sharp shooting pain radiating down the leg;
Weakness, numbness or tingling in the leg;
Tingling or burning sensation, stabbing pains,somewhere in the leg;
Ranging from irregular to continuous irritating and weakening pains in the leg;
Can go from mild to extremely hard to endure radiating pains in the leg, when extremely hard to endure, it is the most intense of pain imaginable;
Weakness in leg, loss of function, even loss of control over bladder and or bowel;
Foot Drop – unable to walk on the heel, difficulty raising the toes or turning the foot inward;
Difficulty raising the heel off the ground, impossibility to walk on tiptoes;
Mixup Of Symptoms And Causes Of Sciatic Pains
Quite often the symptoms that we hear or read about are mixed up with possible causes. Here are some examples of that:
sciatica pains as a result of inflammation of the sciatic nerve;
pain and irritation caused by nerve compression;
pregnancy sciatic pain, due to pinched sciatic nerve between the baby’s head and the uterus, which rests on muscles of the pelvic floor and lower back.
It is good to separate cause and effect. Because as you will see in the article on the causes of sciatic pains, it remains to be seen if some of the mentioned causes are really causing the pain.
But before we go there, let’s also look at the:
Onset Of Sciatica Symptoms
Symptoms often start after injury to the back(bone), but we also hear from people who worked in the garden all day and then the symptoms started at night or they woke up the next morning with the sciatica pains.
With others again symptoms start after physically demanding exercises, prolonged sitting, or making one small wrong move or jump, and sometimes they show up after a long drive.
One story mentioned that symptoms started after driving with a wallet in a back pocket, causing the sciatic pains, and when the wallet was taken out of that pocket, the pains soon decreased and went again.
In women pregnancy and sciatic pains seem to be very much connected, back pain during pregnancy is a very common thing.
All symptoms seem to have one thing in common: they happen in the area that is served by the sciatic nerve, which runs from the lower back and meanders out all the way into the sole of the foot. So if you have any of the above symptoms, it might very well be sciatica!
One final thing, if you are suffering from any of the sciatica symptoms that describe loss of function as in drop foot or loss of bladder or bowel control we suggest immediate consultation with your doctor. Your nerves are too important to be careless with.
Now lets look at the causes of these symptoms, ready for some surprises?
