Relieve Sciatic Pain
What is Sciatica?
Sciatica is most often experienced as pain, weakness, numbness, or tingling in the leg, occurring when there is pressure or damage to the sciatic nerve. This nerve begins in the spine and drops down the back of each leg, controlling the muscles of the back of the knee and lower leg and providing sensation to parts of the thigh, lower leg and foot.
Sciatica is not a condition itself, rather a symptom of another medical problem resulting from muscular issues, slipped/herniated discs, degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, fractures or tumors.
What are Symptoms of Sciatica?
Sciatica pain will vary widely in different people since the conditions causing sciatica and back pain vary as well. Symptoms will range from a dull ache or tingling to pain severe enough to impair movement. Pain, numbness or weakness will most often occur on one side of your body and may be felt in parts of your leg or hip, back of the calf or sole of the foot. Sciatica pain may worsen after standing or sitting, at the end of the day, when sneezing or laughing, walking or bending backwards.
Sciatica Relief
There are a lot of Sciatica treatments which run the gamut of more conservative approaches like physical therapy, all the way to surgery. If you are suffering from symptoms of sciatica, consider giving conservative treatment a try before committing to the more extreme alternative - some estimate that 80% of sciatica patients with displaced discs get better without surgery. Undoubtedly, many people are helped by conservative treatment, but it's hard to say how many and how quickly. Evidence from past clinical trials has been somewhat thin and often contradictory.
However, researchers from Newcastle University in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK have published results from a preliminary study, identifying inversion therapy as an effective conservative treatment for sciatica patients needing help avoiding surgery.
The study focused on patients who were told they needed surgery to relieve their sciatic back pain caused by a herniated disc. The patients were divided into two groups: the Conservative group practiced regular physiotherapy on its own, and the Conservative + Teeter group practiced physiotherapy in addition to using a Teeter Hang Ups inversion table.
Their results were very encouraging for sciatica patients - those who practiced inversion with a Teeter were 70.5% less likely to require surgery. Professor David Mendelow, head of Neuroscience at Newcastle University in England, told the London Telegraph that he estimates inversion therapy could save £80 million a year (about $160 million) in unnecessary surgeries in the UK alone.
Teeter Inversion Table
Teeter began manufacturing inversion therapy products for back pain in 1981, making it the longest continuous supplier of inversion products in the world.
How to use an inversion table? Do you want to try? Our instructors are available to help you.