Sciatica Isn’t a Diagnosis, It’s a Symptom: What’s Really Causing the Leg Pain

Everyone says they have sciatica. Almost nobody stops to ask what is actually causing it.

Sciatica describes a pattern of symptoms, pain that travels from your lower back or buttock down the back of your leg, sometimes with numbness or tingling. It is not a diagnosis on its own. It is more like the word “headache.” Saying you have sciatica tells you where it hurts, not why.

The most talked about cause is a lumbar disc that is bulging or herniated and pressing on a nerve root as it exits your spine. This is a real and common cause, but it is far from the only one.

• Nerve entrapment in the deep gluteal space, sometimes called deep gluteal syndrome, can compress the sciatic nerve without any disc involvement at all. The piriformis muscle is one possible contributor here, but it is often not the only structure involved, which is why this used to get oversimplified as just “piriformis syndrome”

• Spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the space around your nerves, can cause similar leg pain, especially in older adults

• Irritation at the sacroiliac joint, where your spine meets your pelvis, can refer pain down the leg in a way that mimics sciatica even though the sciatic nerve itself is not being compressed there

Treating a nerve entrapment issue in the deep gluteal space like a disc herniation, or vice versa, means treating the wrong structure. Someone with SI joint irritation is not going to get lasting relief from disc-focused stretches, and someone with true nerve root compression needs a different approach than someone dealing with entrapment deeper in the buttock. Getting the actual source right is what determines whether treatment actually works.

At Kinetic Chiropractic, we use a hands-on exam and specific movement and orthopedic tests to narrow down which structure is actually responsible for your leg pain, rather than treating “sciatica” as one generic thing.

If you have been dealing with pain running down your leg and nothing has worked yet, it might be because the wrong structure has been getting the attention. Come see us at Kinetic Chiropractic in Pleasant Grove and let’s find the actual source.