You probably already know that there are far fewer back surgeries performed today than there used to be.

The reason is because too many times after surgery folks still had the same pain.  It didn’t go away.  That’s because the diagnosis for the cause of the pain was incorrect.

Muscles are the most common cause for pain and they are also the most commonly overlooked or ignored cause.

So sometimes a person truly does need surgery.  But surgery should always be a last resort.  Once something is removed or fused it’s changed forever.

And if it doesn’t cure your problem it makes it harder for natural methods to succeed.  Maybe not impossible, just harder.

Probably the biggest problem with surgery for sciatica is that it’s only addressing the immediate symptom.  It’s not addressing the muscle imbalances that probably caused the problem in the first place.

When your muscles are “out of balance” you get into pain.

That’s why you didn’t have pain when you were an active child; you were using ALL of your muscles then.  And that’s why you have pain now; you aren’t using them all anymore.

You might not move much these days, right?  🙁

You see, when your muscles are out of balance they pull your spine out of the position it is supposed to be in.

Did you realize that just about everything that happens in your body has a cause?  If you fall, you get a cut or bruise or broken bone.  The reason was because you fell.  Cause and effect.

Get rid of the cause and you can change the effect.

So if you really want to get lasting relief from sciatica, the very first thing you must do is figure out which muscles are out of balance and causing your pain.  The second thing is to treat them and get them back to neutral.

I remember years ago when I was a new massage therapist.  An elderly woman came in complaining of “sciatica.”  As soon as I placed my hand on the gluteal (buttock) muscles on the side she complained about, I could Continue reading Sciatica and Piriformis Syndrome →