Does your back or neck hurt, and is it accompanied by muscle weakness, tingling, and numbness in the limbs? We can safely assume that you have sciatica, the treatment of which is a rather lengthy process.
A person throughout his life ruthlessly exploits his own spine. Our spine is a prefabricated structure consisting of bony vertebrae and cartilage pads between them. With age, the cartilage wears out or becomes flattened by exertion, resulting in cartilage depletion or intervertebral hernia. The vertebrae begin to shift, squeeze and disturb the nerve endings located in the spinal cord. In young people, sciatica can occur as a result of the formation of pathological growths - osteophytes, as well as stenosis of the spinal canal.
The disease is accompanied by pain not only in places of inflammation of the nerve endings - they are transmitted to other areas of the body. Sciatica can also cause burning, tingling, numbness in the extremities along with muscle weakness.
Due to various causes of the disease, radiculitis itself may differ - treatment, the course of the recovery process. Therefore, you must first establish the exact cause of radiculitis and only after that proceed with its treatment.
Radiculitis - symptoms, treatment
Depending on the cause of the disease and the location of the pain, there are several types of radiculitis:
1. If you have pain in the area of the shoulder blades, which are accompanied by muscle weakness and numbness, then this sciatica is called chest pain. It occurs much less often than others, because this region of the spine wears less than the lumbar and cervical.
2. When lower back pain occurs, along with muscle weakness, a violation of muscle sensitivity appears. They say about such a disease that it is lumbar sciatica or, as it is also called, lumbosacral. This is the most common type of radiculitis. Most often it occurs in men older than 40 years.
3. Sudden pain in the neck can be accompanied by numbness of the fingers, tingling in the fingers, pain in the muscles of the hands - these are the symptoms of cervical radiculitis, the treatment of which is the most painless.
Depending on the types of disease presented above, treatment is prescribed. It runs in several directions, consider them.
1. Radiculitis: drug treatment
First, you will be treated with drugs to relieve pain, get rid of swelling in the soft tissues and reduce inflammation.
2. Radiculitis: physiotherapy treatment
Next, various physiotherapy procedures will be applied to improve blood circulation around nerve endings and to ensure the passage of impulses along nerve fibers, which also helps to relieve painful symptoms.
3. Radiculitis: contact treatment
To relieve muscle blocks and cramps, you can be prescribed massage and manual therapy or acupuncture, which in turn also have a beneficial effect on nerve endings through points of biological activity. All this is done to ensure the normal functioning of nerve fibers.
4. Radiculitis - treatment, recovery
At the final stage, therapeutic exercises are used using traditional and, possibly, oriental techniques. Exercise is designed to gradually restore normal functioning of the spine. The use of special sets of exercises often allows you to release pinched nerve endings and restore the muscle frame to normal. For this, various gymnastic complexes are used, including exercises from Qi Gong gymnastics. In the future, systematic classes in special gymnastics are necessary to prevent re-pinching that occurs with an unbalanced load on the spine.
In non-launched cases, as a rule, treatment of radiculitis without drugs is used. Many of the above methods allow you to relieve pain and virtually eliminate the causes of sciatica. Treatment is usually limited to ten or fifteen sessions, and pain is eliminated by the third session.