Sciatica can be a painful malady, and It can really affect your lifestyle. It can have many contributing factors, and figuring out what structures are causing the symptoms becomes an important challenge. Is the condition a result of a compression in your spine? Or from malalignment in your hip? Or both? Or something else entirely?
Pelvic/Hip Malalignment
In my experience, if I see someone in my practice that has a diagnosis of sciatica and it has not gotten better, they usually have a pelvic/hip malalignment issue which needs to be addressed. If, for example, they are bearing weight more through their right lower extremity, this will most likely cause the left hip to go into a slight external rotation or “roll out” of the hip socket. This causes the lateral left thigh muscles to get tight, and more importantly it can cause the deep posterior hip capsule to become restricted, creating compression on the sciatic nerve. This scenario has been the leading cause of unresolved left sciatic pain that I see frequently in my office.
Right Sciatic Pain
Well, what if you have right sciatic pain? Again, there can be many causes, but what I commonly see on the right side is usually the right lower extremity is in internal rotation, which is just the opposite of the left-hip tendencies. This internal rotation will weaken the right gluteal muscles, creating imbalances and compensations on this side which can contribute to the problem. Due to the position of the right hip, the muscles that externally rotate the hip get weak and can cause irritation to the sciatic nerve. I give people relief from this painful condition by realigning their skeleton through a combination of therapies that I use
One first-time mom with a two-month-old baby could hardly walk, because she was in such shooting sciatica pain. I did some hands-on work and showed her stretches and exercises which she used to realign her pelvis after the birth had loosened it. In just two sessions of my treatment, she was able to walk and care for her baby again without pain.