What is Sciatic Nerve Pain?
Sciatica is often defined as pain, weakness, numbness or tingling that radiates down the leg, often to the knee or foot traveling along the location of one’s sciatic nerve. Pain is often felt in the low back and buttocks region in addition to the sides or back of the posterior thigh. True sciatic pain is often attributed to a lesion, herniated disc, or other impediment that impinges on the sciatic nerve and causes the pain.
Furthermore, the piriformis muscle or adjacent muscles in the lower back and buttocks regions can compress the nerve and mimic what is referred to as “true sciatic pain.” In my experience, this latter situation, called Piriformis compression syndrome, is often a major contributing factor for eliciting the classic sciatic-type pain. In addition, latent virus or other pathogens can often hide or attach to nerve or muscle tissue and cause this type of pain in certain circumstances. Other patterns can be implicated as well including mental and emotional causes or toxic overload such as chemical or radiation poisoning etc.
