Sciatica And Acupuncture

The debate on sciatica and acupuncture is definitely not over and the outcome is not clear. I started to get pain from a crushed sciatic nerve on my left side in 2011. I searched the Internet to find out more about sciatica and acupuncture and I also looked into sciatica and massage while I waited to be well enough to go to the doctors. It seems that there are as many sceptics about sciatica and acupuncture as there are advocates.

Sciatica And Acupuncture

This makes it difficult to know whether acupuncture treatment can cure sciatica or not, but when I got to the doctor's surgery that day, I met two people who said that they found acupuncture for sciatica effective.

One man told me that he had lost his job through sciatic pain preventing him from attending work, but after three weeks of three sessions of acupuncture for pain relief a week, he was now completely cured, although he still goes once every two or three months 'to be sure'.

I have problems with sciatica and acupuncture. Sciatic pain is caused by pressure on a trapped nerve (often trapped by a herniated disc). These are physical causes of sciatica: a disc has shifted or crumbled and collapsed and has come to rest on the sciatic nerve - it is pinching it, causing inflammation and chronic sciatic nerve pain.

So how can you treat sciatica with acupuncture by sticking pins or needles in the body repair that disc or free that nerve? It does not make sense to me.

I went to the doctors and tried all his tablets, but how can they free a nerve either?

So, I opted to try massage therapy, thinking that there was more chance of a masseur being able to put the disc back in position (mine had not crumbled, only shifted to twenty-to-and-ten-past, rather than being horizontal) and free the nerve.

At first, I went to a normal girlie massage parlour, but only once. It was obvious that they did not have the right sort of experience. My wife found a physiotherapist who was trained in massage or lower back pain and after four sessions in five weeks, I can walk upright again for about 500 metres - the first time for three months.

I am not knocking the link that some people say there is between sciatica and acupuncture. In fact, when I next go to a place where I can find an acupuncturist, a practitioner of this ancient traditional Chinese medicine, I will try it.

I have a friend in the UK that has suffered from a herniated disc and sciatica for thirty years and British medical doctors have always told him that neither acupuncture nor massage can help a trapped sciatic nerve.

I know that they are wrong about massage, but I do not know about acupuncture. He still struggles on with traditional herniated disc treatments

Advocates of acupuncture say that the insertion of needles at the correct places stimulates the flow of Qi (Chi) which in turn stimulates the brain to produce endorphins, the body's natural pain killers.

However, I do not want to treat the symptoms of the pain in my back, my hip and my leg, I want to eradicate the cause of it by freeing the nerve and resetting the slipped disc.

If you have a story to tell about healing back pain, sciatica and acupuncture, please email it to me.