What's Sciatica?

You've stepped off the stairclimber after a 30-minute workout, and suddenly a sharp pain shoots down your right leg. Your whole leg feels weak and numb, and you start hopping on your left foot, like a marionette that's had the strings to one leg cut off.

You may have just experienced an attack of sciatica.

Sciatica is an inflammation of the sciatic nerve cord, which branches off the spinal cord in your lower back, runs beneath your buttock muscles and continues all the way down your leg.

This large bundle of nerves, almost three quarters of an inch wide, supplies sensation and motor control to your buttocks, hips and legs. Pain can originate in your lower back and travel down to your buttocks, thighs or lower legs, or it can flare up anywhere along the length of the nerve.

Sciatica can lead to muscle weakness - and it can cause you to lose your reflexes in your knee or ankle; yet this loss of reflex is difficult to detect unless a doctor checks for it.

The Disc Connection

One common cause of sciatica is a damaged, or herniated, disc in the spinal column that pinches a nerve at the root of the sciatic cord. These discs sit like cushioning jelly doughnuts between your vertebrae, the bones that make up your spinal column.

In our teens or early 20s, these discs begin to dry up and degenerate, so it's not uncommon to develop sciatica in your 20s, 30s or 40s. You can also damage a disc by falling or lifting something the wrong way.

The sciatic nerves branch out from your spinal column between three different vertebrae before converging into a cord. The part of the nerve root that is irritated by the damaged disc determines the area where you'll feel pain or develop numbness and weakness. Anything that puts pressure inside your abdomen, such as coughing, sneezing or lifting, may make the pain worse.

How can your physician tell which disc is injured?

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Foreword: Billie Jean King

Comments by Barb Harris
Editor in Chief,
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