05-24-2007, 05:20 AM
There is no "cure", but here are the things that I feel are critical (from the experience of both me and my wife's sciatica over the years_:
1. Lose weight. If your mom is overweight at all, she's probably not going to progress until she takes some of the load off.
2. As h' says, stop sitting! Invest the big bucks in a motorized sit/stand workstation if she spends time at the compute or sitting watching TV. For the few seats she must sit in, then you need to make dang sure they do good things for her posture. The worst possible sitting situation for most people is generally the car. I finally found relief with a McCarty Sacroease device combined with a foam wedge (to tilt the pelvis forward).
3. Sometimes the sciatica is so bad it requires bed rest for a while (my wife was laid up for 6 weeks) to get through the intense pain period. Unfortunately, this won't do a dang thing for improving the situation long term, and may make things worse. Strengthening and flexibility exercises are what will help things in the long term.
4. I have found that looking very carefully at all of my daily "back hurting" behaviours and altering them has made a huge difference. I have reduced my sedentary periods as much as possible, and improved the posture situation at all the places I sit. This has done wonders! Humans are made to be active, not to sit.
1. Lose weight. If your mom is overweight at all, she's probably not going to progress until she takes some of the load off.
2. As h' says, stop sitting! Invest the big bucks in a motorized sit/stand workstation if she spends time at the compute or sitting watching TV. For the few seats she must sit in, then you need to make dang sure they do good things for her posture. The worst possible sitting situation for most people is generally the car. I finally found relief with a McCarty Sacroease device combined with a foam wedge (to tilt the pelvis forward).
3. Sometimes the sciatica is so bad it requires bed rest for a while (my wife was laid up for 6 weeks) to get through the intense pain period. Unfortunately, this won't do a dang thing for improving the situation long term, and may make things worse. Strengthening and flexibility exercises are what will help things in the long term.
4. I have found that looking very carefully at all of my daily "back hurting" behaviours and altering them has made a huge difference. I have reduced my sedentary periods as much as possible, and improved the posture situation at all the places I sit. This has done wonders! Humans are made to be active, not to sit.