Why Stretches Are Bad For Sciatica Pain Relief

Have you been trying to do sciatica stretches but haven’t really gotten the relief that you are looking for? Or are you thinking about doing sciatica stretches, but you are not sure if that’s the best thing to be doing? In this video today, I’m going to talk to you about why stretches are bad for sciatica pain relief.

Real quick, my name is Dr. David Middaugh and I’m a specialist physical therapist here at El Paso manual physical therapy. And I’ve been helping people out with sciatica problems for years now. I’ve seen people try all kinds of different stretches. And of course, they end up going to physical therapy because it didn’t work out for them.

At best, they get short term relief, which is okay for getting you through the night so that you can sleep or maybe getting you through a part of the day without having to take pain medications. Or maybe it’s enough to just keep you away from getting into the doctor’s office or going to the emergency room, so that you can just be comfortable for a bit.

But finding long term sciatica pain relief, is a bit more work than most people think. And stretching is not a good way to begin to get that long term setup or relief. It is just short term, unfortunately. Now here’s why nerves do not like to be stretched nerves have a certain amount of flexibility in them because they are in our body, they come off our spine, they go through our arms into our fingertips, they go off our lower back here, and they go into the into the leg of the thigh all the way down into the toes. And they have a certain amount of flexibility.

Whenever you move your leg, your arm, your foot, your hand, the nerves within that body part have to move along with your foot and hand. So the nerves need a certain amount of flexibility. And if they’re irritated, as in, if you’ve got sciatica, you’ve got irritated sciatic nerves, then that nerve actually shrinks a bit and stretching it out does not make it better, what has to happen for that nerve to get its normal flexibility, it has to go down and its irritation level.

So what this means is stretching out a nerve, a sciatic nerve that is irritated is actually going to be a bad thing for it. Because if it’s already irritated, it’s shortened. Now if you go do some stretch, like a piriformis stretch is a common one. That’s one where you bring your knee towards your chest, you usually turn your leg this way and show you this way. And if you can imagine that nerve, it comes out on this adds to the bone right here and it wraps around goes to the back of the thigh, back of the knee, that nerve is getting stretched around this area.

Although it can feel good to stretch in the moment, it’s irritating the nerves a bit more, keeping the problem there for longer. Another one is a nice chest specially with the foot straight out like that like reaching towards your feet like this with your hands. There are all kinds of stretches out there. Another popular one is lying on your stomach and then extending your back upwards to bend the back backwards to increase the back bend here.

That can actually close the spaces right here where the nerves come out of the spine. And pin centers here a bit further, although it can feel kind of good to get the joints moving. So here’s why people think that they need to stretch and it can even feel good in the short term stretch. Whenever there’s an irritated Sciatica nerve, there’s going to be muscles that also get tight along with it because that Sciatica nerve innervates so many muscles. Not only that, but the muscles, of course, they move joints, they attach around joints, and so they can also cause compression in the joints.

If the muscles are tight. It’s a chain reaction of events that happen when a nerve gets irritated. So we don’t want to do is further irritate the nerve. But if the muscles are tight, the joints are tight, and it feels kind of good to stretch. It makes sense why people would want to stretch and even get some short-term pain relief from stretching. But if we’re talking about fixing the long-term problem, then we have to look at addressing the root of the problem.

Now that can get a bit tricky and maybe senior professional to get to the root of the problem as necessary. But chances are if you’ve got Sciatica in eight out of 10 cases, it’s usually because there’s a shifted pelvis bone this this is the pelvis bone right here, and it’s just one way or the other.

The sciatic nerve pops out right here along the edge of this bone right in the butt area. And if this bone can expose shifts up, or down or rotates this way, or this way, you bet it’s going to compress the nerve right here and cause some problems. Now, how do we get this bonus shift back in the right direction? Well, there is a lot of different things to consider.

The best thing I can tell you right now is you have got to be getting better strengthen your glutes and better strength in your abdominals because those muscles attach to this pelvis bone and give it the best stability so that it doesn’t shift out of position isn’t putting pressure on that Sciatica nerve.

I’ve got a video called the two best in two worst sciatic nerve stretches. And I talked about some of these common stretches that I’ve shown you that are not good to do. And then the two best stretches that I gave in that video, you can go check them out, they actually involve tidying up your muscles so that you can get this bone in the best position, go find a link for that video in the description below.

Now, let me just talk to you more about why strengthening is actually going to be the better thing to chase to pursue. In order to get that long term relief from sciatica problems. When you get strength in the right muscles, you put the joints in a much better position, you calm down the muscles that are overly tight, and you also take tension off the nerve that’s irritated.

Strengthening is by far the much, much better thing to do more reasons for strengthening. When you strengthen the benefits of strengthening. In other words, the increased strength that you get from getting stronger in your butt muscles or your abdominal muscles, the benefits of that lasts days, even weeks, if you continue to strengthen, they can last indefinitely.

Compared to stretching, if you stretch the benefits are known this is all the scientific research evidence, you can the only benefits you get from stretching last 12 to 24 hours. And then that’s assuming that you stretch the muscles that are involved. If you’re stretching, irritated nerve, all it’s probably going to irritated almost right away when clients have come in to see us that have had Sciatica problems. And they told us that they stretched.

They said that they they’re continually stretching throughout the day, you know, they’ll sit there sitting around watching TV, they’re at work, and they’re putting their leg in a position where they can stretch it out, they’re turning their foot inwards and outwards, leaning forward to stretch their hip, they’ll stand up and do some stretches, they’ll go home and lie down and do some stretches. And at best, they get just a few minutes, maybe an hour or two of relief.

But it’s nothing that really truly fixes a problem for good. Once we get them on a strengthening program when we’re going through treatment here, which go check out that video that I was telling you the two best to worst sciatica stretches. Once you start getting those, the right muscles stronger the glutes and the abdominals.

It’s incredible to see the relief that begins to compound over time, little by little the bone starts to shift in the right position, it takes pressure off the nerve, and those glute muscles, they will hold this bone and position, the connection between the tailbone right here and the pelvis bone. There’s a joint in there, it’s called the SI joint to the secret iliac joint you can see it a bit better right here, that joint will become more mobile and it’ll move the way it’s supposed to move to allow the Sciatica nerve to have the normal space that it’s supposed to have.

So it’s not getting irritated all the time. Now another tip of advice that I want to make sure I leave you with today is you have to keep moving. If you have got to Sciatica a problem, right now, one of the worst things you can do is just stop moving completely. You have got to do what you can. And of course, if it’s hurts you to walk a lot. Or if you are if you are stuck, you can’t straighten up all the way, then do stuff that you can do is lying down or seated.

If you are able to walk around, then please start to do some exercise, the more you can move, the better you can free up these joints and muscles and put yourself in a position where you can begin to correct the problem for good. So please do yourself a favor, stop the stretching. There are tons of advice out there, health care professionals, there’s tons of videos, advice on the internet about people telling people with sciatica problems to stretch.

 And you know what the only time that I tell people go ahead and stretch is if you’re just in an absolute pinch, you don’t want to take any medication, you need to get some relief like right now this instance, go ahead and do a stretch but understand that it’s going to lengthen the time that you’re going to have the problem and potentially, you know later on increase the severity of it.

So stretching is just not a good thing to pursue if you’re looking for that long term relief for a sciatica problem. But in the short term, you might do it you might just bite the bullet and do it. It’s just not a good thing though to keep up over the long term. If you are in a situation where maybe you’ve gone and seen that video that I recommended you’ve tried glute strengthening exercises, you tried abdominal exercises, you think you’re doing it just the way it’s supposed to be done.

 And you’re not really getting anywhere and something else that could be going on the SI joints again right here where the pelvis bones connect to the tailbone, you have a pair of those joints, there’s a chance that those joints might be so stuck.

I’ve seen it happen here in the clinic so many times that no amount of stretching will freed up, even exercise when freed up and it really will take somebody with specific skills that knows how to free up those SI joints. To get you over the hump to get you in a position where you can start to strengthen and get some more relief, I’ve seen it happen time and time again here.

One of the exercises that we recommend the client start with oftentimes in the clinic, I’ve seen it where it bothers them a lot to do the exercise the beginning, and we’ll troubleshoot through it the first week or two. And one of the main reasons that it’s so painful to do that exercise, we’re doing a glute exercise, usually, it compresses the joint a bit.

But if the joint is so stuck, it’s just going to irritate the joint and not allow it to move normally. So as a manual physical therapist, a specialist, physical therapists have to go into the joint here and move things around. Once we get it freed up, then that same glute exercises that we have clients do becomes normal for them, it does not hurt them anymore, and it’s actually beneficial for them, it’s actually relieving for them because it helps to position the bone properly to get the potential pressure off that Sciatica nerve.

Hey, thanks for watching today if you thought this video was helpful for you, and if you are considering hiring us, to help you with your sciatica problem, here’s what you can do. Scroll to the bottom of this page here, all over the bottom, there’s some orange buttons, find the one that says request a free 20-minute discovery visit, what a discovery visit is. It’s a 20-minute complimentary visit with a specialist physical therapist, where we can assess your Sciatica a problem. Listen to your story closely.

Make sure that it is the type of sciatica problem that we can help you out with here. And then we can begin to develop a plan to help you solve this problem for the long term so that you can avoid an unnecessary surgery, injections, and pain medications. We help people with this problem all the time pretty darn good at it.

We get people that are slumped over walking into the clinic or people that just can’t sleep at night or aren’t able to exercise or, or just be themselves because of the annoying excruciating pain that their sack of problems putting them through all the time. And it works. If we get them better in it, it keeps for the long term. They avoid having disk surgeries in the back because that’s sometimes, what doctors are recommending for sciatica problems.

There is nothing to lose, please scroll down to the bottom, hit that discovery visit button and the little form will pop up. Leave us for details. Once you submit that form, one of my staff will call you back for a chance to get and they just want to hear everything about your sciatica problem so that we can make sure that it’s a type of sciatica problem that we can help here in the clinic. I really hope that we can be a part of your success story real soon so you can end the sciatica problem. Have a wonderful day.