Summary
Acupuncture can help with sciatica, a condition characterized by compression or damage to the sciatic nerve. Symptoms include pain, weakness, numbness, and burning sensations that can travel from the buttocks to the foot. Acupuncture, along with nutrition and herbs, can provide relief and reduce pain. Multiple therapies, such as chiropractic care and physical therapy, can be combined with acupuncture for better results. Carlos St. Just, a licensed acupuncturist, offers treatment for sciatica at his clinics in South Pass and Burbank. For more information, visit csjacupuncture.com or contact Carlos via email.”
Transcript:
can acupuncture help with sciatica sciatica is that something that you treat as an acupuncturist yes i do yes acupuncture can help yes the science does support it yes uh patients do receive benefits and do receive um achieve some a sense of relief that was the word i was looking for here hi my name is carlos st just
licensed acupuncturist holistic healthcare provider i always like to do a little run down here at the end of the day and just spill whatever’s on my mind out on the camera here not trying to be shy right so just wanted to dive a little bit into sciatica and what i feel can distinguish true sciatica in the clinic
clinical sense and what patients can do and all that fun stuff a lot of cool information so sciatica is compression or disturbance or any kind of damage to the sciatic nerve which runs down the glute the buttocks or the glutes and runs distally which means away from the body downwards towards your foot and this muscle can get
compressed by a sorry this nerve can get compressed by a muscle known as the piriformis muscle and that can cause compression and affect the nerve and whatever the reason may be for the compression of the sciatic nerve you’re gonna have certain sensations you’re gonna have one either pain or weakness uh what i find a lot of the
times is that patients have pain they have weakness and also i for clinically what i see is they have they have the numbness or burning sensation and it travels all the way down to their foot right maybe to their calcaneus which is your heel so you have the sensation that’s traveling all the way down it’s burning it’s
it’s it it hurts uh you know it’s possibly causing some weakness on one side and why is that important because i want to differentiate the sciatic pain from maybe a muscle strain or a an issue with the tendon or whatever the case may be so to help provide a differential diagnosis for us and create a differential treatment
pattern right a protocol or apply a protocol based on whatever symptoms are being presented in this case the sciatica so that’s why i see i want to evaluate patients excuse me i want to evaluate patients and see if it’s truly sciatica once again may not be all the time in in these instances but from my clinical experience
usually the patients will also have the numbness the burning any kind of neuropathy associated with the sciatic nerve disturbance and it will travel all the way down all right can i go halfway yes right so how do we tr how do we view it in traditional chinese medicine any impediment of the meridians of the flow of the
energy in the body can cause pain can cause issues whenever there’s any kind of numbness or burning sensation in traditional chinese medicine we associate that with some with a concept known as blood deficiency or a yin deficiency which has to deal with the fluids the nourishment in the body which you can even liken it to when you
fall asleep on your arm and your hands get numb right or your hand comes on where your arm becomes numb that’s the sensation so you know going back to this um uh you know how how how do we treat it do you provide more nourishment to the body yes that includes acupuncture that includes nutrition there’s certain foods
that i will prescribe for patients to eat to consume in order to help reduce the pain and in my experience it may take a few treatments it may take a couple weeks um it could be a as soon as maybe the first treatment i could be in as little as two to three weeks where the patient will
start seeing and experiencing the decrease of pain and starting to see the symptoms subside so my goal is to always give patients an accurate uh an accurate view in terms of their their condition and the treatment options they have available do i try to help patients avoid any kind of surgery yes all the time right acupuncture is
a first-line therapy so we try to use these therapeutics as well as herbs and emission herbs i said nutrition but not also herbs which is different from nutrition nutrition is associated more with the daily foods that you eat and the herbs are therapeutic in the sense that they’re being prescribed so you know they they they have different
intentions and they’re used oh same same goal right to get you better but how they’re used and consumed is different so when you combine all this it helps patients to get better and i am a fan of multiple therapies i have patients who are concurrently either seeing chiropractic care seeking chiropractic care or currently undergoing physical therapy and
it all helps at all we all put it together right the acupuncture can help right not just the needles right applying or putting in the needles and applying the treatment but acupressure or cupping or other modality or something along those lines right if we need uh something more intense there’s electro acupuncture which a lot of people are
like i’ll try i’m sure another uh something else for another day right but i hope this gives you a little bit of insight as an acupuncturist do we treat sciatica and is it can acupuncture be a potential therapy for your sciatic pain and the answer is yes for more information please visit csjacupuncture.com you’re more than welcome to
send me an email mailbox at csj acupuncture dot com uh if you want to come to the clinic you can view uh clinic locations on the website i’m in south pass and then burbank and if you can’t reach me uh send me an email i’ll i will try to find you a referral wherever you are at
