Can being overweight cause sciatic nerve pain?

Sciatica pain is a common type of nerve pain. Excess weight is also one of the most common causes of sciatic pain. Being overweight or obese is bad for multiple reasons. It can increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, and more.

But there's another health problem affecting obesity, and you might not even realize it. Being overweight can directly contribute to sciatica pain because excess weight puts more strain on the spine. Excessive pressure on the spine can cause compression or irritation of the sciatic nerve, leading to sciatica. Weight, for example, feeds sciatic nerve pain in many patients.

If you're obese or even overweight, those extra pounds put excessive pressure on your spine, which also starts or aggravates sciatica. If you're above a healthy weight, healing from sciatica also takes longer. Okubadejo offers personalized treatments for sciatic pain, tailoring your plan to meet your specific needs. Khayal works with you to treat the problem that causes sciatica, losing even a few extra pounds can speed up your recovery process.

By achieving a healthy body weight, you can finally break the cycle of sciatic pain and weight problems, ensuring that you find long-term pain relief while at the same time improving your overall health. If you have sciatica, that stabbing pain that starts in your lower back, shoots through your butt and runs down your leg, you've probably tried everything to relieve your symptoms. Wearing high heels can also lead to sciatic pain, because they force the body forward, causing it to flex the hips and hamstrings and potentially compressing the sciatic nerve. It uses careful and strategic chiropractic manipulations to help relieve stress on your compressed nerve, as well as relaxing massage therapy, cold laser therapy, and body strengthening exercises to correct your musculoskeletal system and help you get lasting relief from chronic sciatic pain.

If this happens often, you may be dealing with sciatica, and if you're overweight, your own body weight could be the root cause. Whether you have a herniated disc, bone spur, or spinal stenosis, you're likely to feel that sharp, throbbing, excruciating pain that starts in your lower back and runs the length of your leg in the form of sciatica. The spine has to support your weight, so if you accumulate extra pounds, it will sink under that pressure and keep pressing on the sciatic nerve. These types of diseases can cause spinal stenosis, herniated disc, and other conditions that put pressure on the sciatic nerve.

Not being able to move limits the type of exercise you can do, which can lead to additional weight problems and even more intense sciatica-related pain. Incorporating exercise and weight loss into your sciatica treatment plan can also improve the health of your back, protect you from re-injury, and reduce the chances of having symptoms again in the future. Regardless of whether your weight caused sciatica or not, if you already have it due to an injury, hernia, disc, or some other condition, being obese can definitely make it worse. The last thing you want to do is add pressure to an already compressed nerve, but that's exactly what your excess weight does.

Sharron Bouyer
Sharron Bouyer

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