It’s kind of funny in a sad sort of way that I just launched a new website about the natural ways to get relief from back pain and sciatica, because yesterday at work I tripped while going up the stairs carrying a 20L jug of enzymes and had to leave work due to muscle spasms and brutal sciatic nerve pain. I’m now off work for a while and I don’t know for sure when I will be back to full duty. The ‘funny part’ is that the main page on the new website is a sales page for the all natural pain remedy called Heal-n-Soothe which I just added to my recommended products. Heal-n-Soothe is an all natural pain reliever made of enzymes. Of course they are different enzymes than the ones I was carrying up the stairs at work, but they’re enzymes nonetheless. What a sick synchronicity that was.

Perhaps the incident at work yesterday was the universe’s way of revealing the future to me. Maybe my new website for natural sciatic relief is going to be a flop, or maybe it’s going to cause me more pain than it’s worth. Or maybe the universe was telling me that I’ll be leaving work because of enzymes. Maybe this was not such a bad omen after-all, maybe this new website (that is currently geared to sell natural pain relief enzymes) is my key to financial freedom and making my exit from the workplace for good. Maybe, just maybe, it was a sign that I’m on the right track.

If you want to check out the new website, click this link: Sciatic Relief

Keep in mind that the site is brand new and for the time being it’s pretty much just a ‘mini-site’ made to sell back pain products. The reviews are all honest though, and the products promoted are high quality, just like here at this website.

For the rest of this post I am going to share some of the best sciatic pain relief tips that I can come up with thus far into my quest to cure back pain. Remember that these tips are only what help with my specific condition, they may or may not help you with your back pain. I’m sure some of this information will be relevant to your condition, but some of it won’t be and could actually cause more damage depending on what is causing your pain.

If you aren’t sure what’s right for you, consult your physio-therapist, chiropractor, and other health care providers before beginning to make anything you read here a regular part of your pain relief program or exercise regime.

Proteolytic Systemic Enzymes (Heal-n-Soothe)

Since I started this article talking about enzymes, I figure I might as well get them out of the way early. Heal-n-Soothe can help you reduce pain naturally. It’s an all natural formula designed to fight pain related to inflammation. It’s an all natural anti-inflammatory and not only does it relieve pain but it also works as an anti-viral, anti-bacterial immune system booster.

Heal-n-Soothe has helped hundreds of people ditch their prescription pain-killers and anti-inflammatory drugs (nsaids). This is true for me too. I find Heal-n-Soothe works just as good as any of the over-the-counter pain relievers like Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Advil, or Aspirin. I’m still on my first bottle, but I’ve found it works best when you take the enzymes at night just before bed, as long as you’ve had an empty stomach for at least an hour or two. (you shouldn’t eat right before bed anyway) You also have to play with the dose, each person needs a different amount of Heal-n-Soothe for it to be effective. I am taking 8-12 capsules per day which is almost 3 times the recommended dosage on the bottle. This is safe, of course, because everything in Heal-n-Soothe is all natural and non-toxic with no reported side effects. I usually take 5 capsules right before bed, and if I need to, I take 3-5 in the morning when I get up if I feel stiff or sore.

For more information on how proteolytic systemic enzymes work to reduce pain and inflammation you can click the link below to read an article about it on my new site, natural-sciatic-relief.com.

Click this link: Systemic Enzymes

The article above is actually an email I was sent by my friend Steve Hefferon from the Healthy Back Institute. When he saw that I was taking Heal-n-Soothe he thought I might like to know more about it so he sent me that email. When he found out I was building a website about back pain he told me that I could post it there if I wanted, so I did.

The Healthy Back Institute currently has a promotion going on where you can get a one month supply of Heal-n-Soothe for free if you pay the shipping. This is the same promotion that lured me into trying it, and I’m glad I signed up. Make sure you request your bottle before August 31st because they are taking down the free trial promotion in September.

Spinal Decompression with the Nubax Trio or an Inversion Table

The second most effective way to get fast sciatic relief for me is to use the Nubax Trio for spinal decompression (also known as ‘traction’). Decompression takes the pressure off of the sciatic nerve which is what causes me most of my pain. I’ve read some bad reviews online, especially on the nubax discussion threads on facebook, but I can honestly say that the Nubax Trio helps for my particular condition. Once again, it’s not a magic ‘cure all’ device, but I’m certainly glad that I dished out the $300 to get one.

Sometimes if I use the Nubax too frequently or for too long, or if I try to ‘force’ it and more traction than I should I will find it slightly painful afterwards. I’ve learned that less is more when dealing with back pain, so if you get yourself a Nubax Trio make sure you don’t over-do it.

I’ve never actually used an inversion table, but I think it would be a better choice than the Nubax. I got a Nubax Trio instead of an inversion table due to space restrictions and would have went with a full out inversion table if I had the space when I decided to try decompression, especially since they are the same price.

For more information on the Nubax Trio click here.

For more information on Inversion Therapy click here.

Muscle Balance Therapy (Lose The Back Pain)

The next step to getting sciatic relief is muscle balance therapy. Most back pain starts with an injury or ‘incident’ of some kind, but when it doesn’t go away after a few days it is usually because of pre-existing muscle imbalances.  These imbalances pull your hips out of alignment and keep them there until the muscle imbalances are addressed with the correct set of stretches and exercises. Without addressing the underlying cause of the pain (muscle imbalances) you will never get complete and lasting lower back pain and sciatic relief.

The Muscle Balance Therapy program called Lose The Back Pain that is offered by the Healthy Back Institute is a complete assessment and treatment program for muscle imbalances. I can attest to the accuracy of the assessment portion of the program because after going through the assessments I was told that I have a right side high hip and a backwards tilted pelvis. I recently switched to a new chiropractor with a very good reputation and went in for an assessment with him. After going through about 150 little tests in his office he told me that my left side hip is pretty much in proper alignment but my right side is twisting up and back. In other words he told me that I have a right side high hip with a backwards tilt. This abnormal torquing of my hips and lower back is probably what’s causing my sciatic pain.

The corrective exercises and stretches provided in the Lose The Back Pain system are unique to you and your condition which is why so many people get good results using this program. I’m still trying, but it definitely seems to be helping more than any other stretches or exercises that have ever been given by doctors, physio-therapists, or chiropractors.

Click here for one of the most effective stretches included in the Lose The Back Pain system. It’s the single most effective stretch for immediate relief of sciatic nerve pain for me. Another important stretch is the basic seated hamstring stretch. This is where you sit on the ground with one leg out and gently reach for your toes, this stretch is often neglected. There are about 18 other targeted stretches and exercises that the Lose The Back Pain system advised me to do and to do them all it takes about 45 minutes out of my day.

Click here to get a free 30 day trial of the Lose The Back Pain system.

Massage Therapy

I just started seeing a highly recommended massage therapist and after only one session with her I know that she will be able to help me fix my back and finally get lasting relief. When I saw her for the first time she basically confirmed everything that the Lose The Back Pain system told me. She determined that the same muscles were tight that the Lose The Back Pain system said would be tight and needed to be stretched. After the first 90 minute session I had with my massage therapist I felt much better than I did when I went in. I felt much looser and I had a feeling of hope that getting rid of my sciatic pain is within reach.

It’s important to find a skilled and knowledgeable massage therapist. Years ago when I had my first back injury I saw a crappy chiropractor and a crappy massage therapist who shared an office and waiting room. The massage therapist just did a general massage and didn’t really ask me any questions or do any sort of assessment. She just did a basic ‘feel good’ massage and hoped it would be enough for me. I don’t think she had even spoken to the chiropractor across the hall from her about my condition! Needless to say, I didn’t get any relief from her (or the chiropractor across the hall). Make sure you find a reputable massage therapist and be sure to tell them everything you know about your specific condition and the muscle imbalances that are causing you pain so that they can work with you to correct your problem.

Chiropractic Care

Up until recently I was fairly ‘anti-chiropractic’ because of the bad experience I had with a crappy chiropractor when I had my first back injury over 5 years ago. While doing all this research on back pain and sciatica over the last few months I’ve read a lot of good things about chiropractors so I decided to seek out a new chiropractor with a solid history of helping people with sciatic and lower back pain. I found one through a recommendation and went in for an assessment. The assessment was kind of pricey ($120) but the doctor spent nearly an hour and a half with me in his office doing a series of physical tests to determine an appropriate treatment. The other chiropractor didn’t do any of that with me and simply cracked my back and had me out of his office with my next scheduled appointment in my hand in less than 20 minutes.

Finding a reputable chiropractor is even more important than finding a reputable massage therapist. A chiropractor is physically, and sometimes forcefully, manipulating your spine and putting it into proper alignment. You don’t want just anyone manipulating your spine, it’s what protects your spinal cord and also what bears the weight of nearly everything you do during the course of a day. That’s why it’s extremely important that you form a strong relationship with your chiropractor and make sure that not only do you give them as much information as possible but they should also be explaining everything they are doing to you and why. A visit to the chiropractor should not be a quick-fix back cracking and then you’re out the door, your chiropractor should be spending time with you, explaining things, and giving you informed advice on how to correct your muscle imbalances so that you can keep your spine and hips in proper alignment.

My new chiropractor confirmed what the Lose The Back Pain system told me, I have an up and backward twisting of my hips on the right side, resulting in a right side high hip and a backwards tilted pelvis. The Lose The Back pain system helped me identify several corrective exercises and the chiropractor said that for now they looked good and to keep doing them but it’s likely that by my next visit (my second visit with him) he will likely have some which he will want to take off of my list and a few to add to it. So far this new chiropractor seems to be the most knowledgeable and also the most personable of all of those on my sciatic pain relief team. I truly hope he can help me eliminate my pain for good.

Acupuncture

A few months back I had two acupuncture sessions with a well respected acupuncturist near by. I did enjoy the treatment and thought the sensation of electrical pulse needles being stuck in my body was kind of cool, but the treatment didn’t seem to offer any real lasting relief.

Leaving the clinic I did feel good, I actually felt better than I did when leaving the chiropractor that I was seeing with my first injury. The feeling gave temporary relief that lasted a few days and then it went back to about normal after that. I do recommend that anyone interested in acupuncture goes and gives it a try. There’s certainly something to it and that’s why I’m writing about it here in this post.

Acupuncture is great for dealing with pain in the present moment, but I don’t think that acupuncture alone is the way to cure any chronic back pain problem or sciatica. I think that using an acupuncturist while doing the rest of the above steps could be useful, but I wouldn’t rely on acupuncture treatments alone to solve your back pain problems or give you lasting sciatic relief.

For now that’s all of the sciatic relief tips that I have to share with you. If I find new treatments that I deem worthy I will add them to this page or maybe write a new post about it, but for now these are all of the most effective back pain and sciatica treatments that I am aware of.

I hope this article helps you find lasting relief for your back pain or sciatic nerve pain.

Considering that I had to leave work early today because of some of the worst back pain I’ve had since injuring my back over 5 years ago, I guess it makes it a good day to do an update on my efforts to live free of back pain and sciatica.

I started a 30 day trial of the Lose The Back Pain system from the Healthy Back Institute on June 24th of this year — that’s over 30 days ago, so one might assume that the 30 day trial is now over… but it isn’t.

I had to abort my 30 day trial of the Lose The Back Pain System a couple weeks ago when my grandfather passed away and I had family from out of town staying in the spare room, which happens to be the only place that I have enough room to do the stretches and exercises required by the program.

I was able to start doing the exercises and stretches again starting last night, but I will soon be interrupted again when I go to the Shambhala Music Festival in a little over a week. I will continue doing the stretches until that time, and if possible, I will continue doing whatever stretches and exercises I can while at the festival, but I doubt I will get around to doing much for stretching once I’m actually at the festival.

Completing the 30 day trial isn’t absolutely necessary though, because I plan to continue using the system until it works, even if it takes 6 months, or a year.

The first 2 weeks of ‘Lose The Back Pain’

During the first two weeks that I did the Lose The Back Pain corrective exercises, I had fairly positive results over all. Most of those days went by with less pain than normal, and my back would only get sore after doing something to set it off — something like carrying heavy objects, lifting things, pushing heavy objects, bending over for extended periods of time, or sitting on bad chairs/couches. For the most part the pain was minimal until something aggravated it.

Almost every day I would still have a pretty sore back by the end of the day, especially after 12 hour shifts at work, but the pain was less intense and didn’t last as long as before I had started doing the exercises.

There were a couple of days where the pain was stronger than usual, though. I’m not sure exactly why, but there were 2 days that I can remember specifically that I thought I felt worse than I did before starting the exercises. On those days I went a bit easier when doing the corrective stretches and exercises for that day. It seemed to help, because the next day would be much better.

Stopping the corrective exercises

As I mentioned above, my grandfather passed away and I had some family from out of town come to stay in the spare bedroom that I do my stretches in. This caused me to stop doing the corrective exercises for a while.

At first it didn’t seem to make much of a difference, my back felt about the same as usual, but this last week has been horrific. The last 5 days have been some of the worst days for back pain that I can remember in the whole 5 years I have been struggling with it. The first of the last 5 days was a 12 hour shift at work doing some pretty heavy lifting all night long for 12 hours — by the end of the shift my back hurt quite a bit, but I expected that since I had been doing so much work.

The next day I woke up and I was quite stiff and my back was sore. I don’t usually wake up with too much back pain, it usually gets worse as the day goes on and is worst at the end of the day. I knew I was off to a bad start for that day, but I went in to work anyway and worked my shift. The entire day I was really sore, I had lots of sciatic pain and also general lower back pain/ache.

I had the next 2 days off, those two days were not as bad as the first two, but they were also quite painful. I did very little to aggravate it during these two days, because I knew how sore it had been during the previous two and I didn’t want to have to repeat it.

Yesterday I had to work again and it was one of the most painful days I’ve had in a long time. I was incredibly sore after work. I am now able to do the corrective exercises again, because the guests have now gone home, so I did them lightly last night. Surprisingly, doing the stretches didn’t seem to make it hurt any more at all, it actually hurt less to do the stretches last night than it did when I first started doing them back in June! My back was still very sore, but doing the stretches didn’t seem to aggravate it at all. I found that really weird — I was expecting that doing the stretches would be extremely painful.

When I went to bed, my back was really sore and when I woke up this morning it was still really sore. The last 2 days have not been the usual sciatic type of pain though, it’s been more of an ache in my lower back and right leg and not the tingly and ‘pinching’ feeling that I usually get. Maybe that’s why it seems to hurt more than usual, because it hurts in a different way than I’ve gotten used to.

When I got up to go to work this morning, I took 600mg of Ibuprofen, which I don’t normally do. I almost always avoid pharmaceuticals, especially stuff like Ibuprofen and Tylenol. They’re unhealthy and they don’t usually do very much for me, but I was in pretty bad pain so I decided to give them a try. By noon today I was too sore to stay for the rest of the shift — I told my supervisor I had to go see a chiropractor or someone to help with the pain, and I clocked out early.

Making appointments

On my way out of work one of my co-workers recommended a good massage therapist to me. I’ve only been to a massage therapist once, and it wasn’t that great of an experience, but the therapist I saw actually shared an office with the chiropractor I was seeing at the time who was also not very good.

Because of my experience with that particular chiropractor I said I would never go to another chiropractor again because I’m sure he actually made my back weaker instead of helping to fix the problems.

The massage therapist that my coworker recommended sounds pretty good so I went ahead and booked a 90 minute session with her for this coming Friday, I’m looking forward to that for sure!

I also was going to try and see a chiropractor today for a quick fix of the pain, but I was unable to find one that had any open bookings for today. I did come across something kind of synchronistic while looking for a new chiropractor though — over the last few days I’ve been looking into Qigong (chi kung, chi gong), and I found an 8 week course coming up in September that I am planning to register for. It’s being taught by a Dr. Orchard. While looking through the chiropractor section of the phone book I found ‘Dr. Orchard’s Holistic Health and Chiropractic’. When I looked at the address I recognized it as a clinic that had been recommended to me several years ago when I first injured my back and was seeing the ‘not so good’ chiropractor.

I did a little internet searching and found out that the Dr. Orchard that teaches Qigong and the Dr. Orchard who owns the clinic are the same guy. I decided that since I can’t get in anywhere to see a chiropractor today, I might as well go see Dr. Orchard whenever I can get in. I made a first time appointment with Dr. Orchard in August after I get back from the Shambhala Music Festival. Yeah, it’s a ways away still but I think the synchronicity was there to point me in the right direction, so I’m looking forward to meeting Dr. Orchard and seeing what he can do for me. It will also give me a bit of a chance to ask him a few things about his upcoming Qigong classes.

Proteolytic Enzymes

I also decided to take up the Healthy Back Institute on their offer of a free bottle of Heal-n-Soothe proteolytic enzyme formula for pain relief. I’ve read a lot of good things about enzyme treatments for pain and inflammation and since I’ve been in so much pain over the last few days, I decided it’s time to give Heal-n-Soothe a try.

I also was convinced to add a Freedom Back to my order, the freedom back is a ‘back orthodic’ that helps you keep a good posture when sitting in any chair. It was $49, so I thought I’d give it a try… what the hell, why not?

I’m really looking forward to the package arriving so I can start taking the enzyme formula, I think it will help me a lot more than the Ibuprofen I took today, that’s for sure!

I also stopped in at the health food store today to see if they had anything other than MSM and glucosomine to offer me for pain relief. As soon as I walked in there was a big stand of some ‘natural’ pain relief mixture. It’s called ‘Curamin’ and it was on sale for $35 a bottle. When I checked the ingredients list I right away put the bottle back on the shelf when I read that the first ingredient was “DLPA (dl Phenylalanine)” . Phenylalanine is pretty bad stuff and it’s what makes the artificial sweetener aspartame so bad for you. The other ingredients are Boswellia Extract, Curcumin Extract, and Nattokinase.

I ended up buying a bottle of Curamin, despite the fact that it has phenylalanine in it. I figured that I’m not going to be taking it regularly and that if it helped beat the pain even just for today that it was probably worth the $35, so I bought it. I took one capsule so far — I can’t tell if it did anything or not because I also took MSM, Ibuprofen, and a magnesium supplement today.

The girl at the health store recommended that I try a magnesium/malic acid solution that they sold. She said that a lot of people use it to help with nerve and muscle pain, so I bought a bottle of that while I was there as well. I sure hope that at least one of these things works! I don’t want to be in pain anymore!

Continuing the Lose The Back Pain system

As soon as I am finished writing this post, I am going to do the corrective exercises again and hope that tomorrow I feel better than I do today. I will be taking the magnesium solution as well as MSM each day, and when the Heal-n-Soothe arrives I will start taking that as recommended. I will try not to take too much of the Curamin stuff because I don’t like ingesting phenylalanine, but if it hurts as much as it did today I will probably try taking more of that. The bottle does say ‘Stop Pain Now! – Guaranteed. Experience relief like never before”.

I will continue to do the Lose The Back Pain corrective stretches and exercises and use the Nubax Trio for spinal decompression whenever I can. I’ll do periodic progress reports as I go, and if I come across any miracle cures or new discoveries I’ll be sure to write about them.

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For more information on the Lose The Back Pain system, the Freedom Back, or Heal-n-Soothe, you can visit the healthy back institute which is where I got those three products. The Healthy Back Institute is the overall best back pain and sciatica information resource that I’ve found to date. Click here to visit the Healthy Back Institute.