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Sciatica Symptoms

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Sciatica Symptoms

Acute low back pain (not always present, especially in piriformis syndrome).
Pain radiating down the leg.
This pain may be sharp and accompanied by pins and needles and / or numbness.
Sciatica pain is often triggered by a minor movement such bending over to pick something up.
Pain may be worse by sitting, lifting, coughing or sneezing
Pain is usually relieved by lying down, often on one side.
Pain is often better in the morning after a nights rest
There may be muscle spasm in the lower back.
Tenderness in the lower back when pressing in.

Potential Causes of your Sciatica are:

By far the most common is muscle knots, technically known as trigger points.

Most common cause is impingement of the sciatic nerve by the piriformis muscle deep in the buttock, which is called piriformis syndrome. A piriformis muscle contracted enough to cause this problem invariably contains trigger points that also radiate pain down the back of the leg, and so the two problems usually co-exist. It can be extremely difficult to tell the difference between symptoms of the nerve pinch, and symptoms of piriformis and other muscular trigger points.

In an unlucky minority, the sciatic nerve actually passes through the piriformis muscle, rather than underneath it. This probably results in a much greater vulnerability to sciatic nerve irritation a kind of super piriformis syndrome, fundamentally the same as regular piriformis syndrome but with a hair trigger. In this case, sciatic nerve impingement is usually a more significant factor.

By far the least common cause of sciatica is an intervertebral disc herniation pressing on the roots of the sciatic nerve in the low back. As with piriformis syndrome, the symptoms are often primarily caused by muscular dysfunction. Disk herniations are routinely asymptomatic they only tend to cause problems when certain other unknown factors are present, one of which is probably the presence of severe trigger points in the lumbar muscles