Inflammation or pinching of the sciatic nerve, sciatica – these are all synonyms, names for the same disease. Sufferers who have experienced this neurological disease at least once in their life are unlikely ever to forget their sad experience.
Pain with sciatica is like seizures and can sometimes last for several hours, especially at night; it flows down the back of the thigh, passes under the knee and reaches the toes along the back and side of the lower leg.
Symptoms
The pain of a nerve injury can be of varied nature – it can be aching, burning, stabbing, shooting, sharp or dull. Sometimes it spreads over the whole surface of the leg, and sometimes it can be observed only in its separate part.
From time to time, the pain may pass, but after a short period, it will return. Usually, the pain only affects one leg, but in many cases, it can also be present in both legs.
It is noticed that in women, the right leg is most often affected, and in men – the left.
The difference like pain can often be explained by which layers of nerves are affected by inflammation – external or internal. In the initial case, the pain is called dysesthetic, in the second – truncal. Dysesthetic pain happens due to inflammation of small nerve fibers. Sufferers describe it as shooting and raw, stabbing and burning, resembling an electric shock.
Truncal type of pain occurs as a result of compression of the spinal roots, with some neuropathies.
In addition to pain, there are several other signs of sciatic nerve inflammation. This is numbness of the running creeps, legs, burning. Sometimes there is a set of symptoms of inflammation, for example, swelling of the legs, conversely, lack of perspiration, redness of the skin, and excessive sweating of the feet.
If your knee pain does not subside with self-care, affects your activities of daily living, or worsens over time, consult a Ravenscroft doctor for a diagnostic workup. Many back problems that create sciatica may also occur in knee pain, so make sure to consider all your symptoms to your doctor, which will better pinpoint the root of the underlying cause because treatment of this disease depends on What causes sciatica. Good health to all!
