Treatment resistant sciatica is the most common form of lower back and leg pain syndrome. Sciatica has a well earned reputation as a chronic and stubborn symptomatic expression and is known to be extremely difficult to cure. In fact, patients who experience symptoms lasting more than 6 months have a better chance of enduring a lifetime of suffering than they do of ever truly recovering 100%.
Sciatica is not a condition or diagnosis unto itself. It is a term reserved for a set of symptoms which generally includes pain, tingling, weakness and/or numbness in the lower back, buttocks legs and/or feet. Sciatica can be caused by a diversity of mechanical, vascular, neurological and psychosomatic sources, although the vast majority of affected patients are diagnosed with a spinal causation of one type or another.
The usual diagnosed spinal sources of sciatica may include such conditions as: degenerative disc disease, herniated discs, osteoarthritic bone spurs, foraminal stenosis, spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis, scoliosis, chemical radiculitis from a ruptured disc and extreme lumbar hyper-lordosis. The most commonly diagnosed non-spinal structural sources of sciatica include piriformis syndrome and sacroiliac joint dysfunction. While it is true that virtually all of these conditions can create sciatic nerve pain in the lower body, it is also a fact that these symptoms are rarely long lasting and will almost always respond well to appropriate treatment modalities.
If sciatica caused by a structural source is not generally a chronic concern and typically resolves with indicated therapy, why do most patients never recover from their pain? This is an age old question which has plagued sciatica sufferers and care providers for generations. The answer to this question is becoming ever clearer, as new research points to the epidemic incidence of ischemia as the logical causation of most sciatica and general radicular pain syndromes. Ischemia is also known as oxygen deprivation back pain, and can come about due to a variety of anatomical causes often associated with poor cardiac or vascular function. However, the overwhelming majority of ischemic pain syndromes are the direct result of a psychogenically driven or psychosomatically perpetuated pain imperative enacted by the subconscious mind as a defense mechanism against repressed, suppressed and completely unconscious expressions of anger, fear, insecurity, poor self esteem, guilt, regret and other negative and highly sensitive emotional issues.
Medical doctors do not receive comprehensive training in mind/body medicine and are taught in the well established Cartesian tradition of engineering the human body as a great and complex machine. This approach to care is poorly conceived, ineffective and directly responsible for the epidemic of chronic pain which is burdening our healthcare system to the point of failure. Doctors need to wake up to the facts that the mind and body do indeed work together to create all conditions of disease and health. Doctors need to address the emotional side of chronic pain. Most of all, doctors need to stop blaming ongoing pain on coincidental and completely normal spinal scapegoats, such as disc abnormalities and spinal arthritis. The medical approach to treating back pain is a dismal failure and it is time for care givers to acquiesce to the idea that they are completely misguided in almost all that is accepted about common back pain and sciatica. Once this occurs, then true progress towards effective treatment can begin…
Luckily, in the meantime, there are a growing number of doctors who have embraced the truth about chronic pain and have been treating it very successfully using a completely psycho-emotional approach. The treatment statistics are incredible using knowledge therapy, as opposed to the plethora of mostly punishing and wasteful medical modalities, such as spinal surgery, ongoing chiropractic manipulations, risky pharmaceutical treatment and invasive injection therapy. It is amazing how well psychological therapies work at permanently resolving physical pain, while physical treatments do little more than provide temporary placebo effects and fatten the wallets of care givers…
