Sciatic Exercise | How To Use Warm Water To Your Best Advantage
Posted on November 21, 2009
Filed Under Sciatica | Leave a Comment
Sciatic Exercise sounded like an oxymoron to me at first. But in reality, while bed rest is good for you at the beginning of a sciatica flare up, it will probably worsen your condition if going on too long (more than a day or two). You need to get back to your normal rhythm of life as soon as you can (of course avoiding the strenuous things you did that got you into this mess in the first place). Once your worst pain has simmered down you should seriously consider different types of sciatic exercises, depending on what caused your sciatica pain. What helps for one condition may worsen another. That’s why you should always see a physician before starting exercises to find out when you can start exercising, which exercises to do and how often.
Having said that, I’d like to focus on a particular type of sciatic exercises, which will probably be one of the most beneficial types of treatments for your sciatica pain: warm water exercises. Even though at the beginning of a sciatica flare up it is better to treat with cold rather than heat, once the healing process is underway warm water is very beneficial in a number of ways.
Soaking in warm water will help relax you, it also increases blood flow and will help to soften up tightened muscles. Warm water will help to speed up your healing process. It’ll augment your range of movement, since warm water makes tight muscles more pliable. You might want to take a warm bath before doing your exercises (don’t overdo it, since at some point your body temperature will rise too high).
Now that you are very relaxed you could do some water exercises, which are much easier to do than normal exercises since being suspended in water takes most of the weight off your spine, disks, joints, ligaments and muscles; it also lessens the pain of some of the exercises and the fear of possible pain, which by itself can cause you to tense.
The water’s density will make your muscles work harder while simultaneously it’ll reduce the stress for your entire body. Just marching or walking in the water can be a good start to reduce muscle spasms and pain.
Warm water exercises and water exercises overall are a great starting point for exercises altogether after an acute sciatica flare up and other causes of back pain. Warm water exercises are some of the most beneficial exercises since you get both the reduction of inflammation due to increased circulation and the strengthening of the muscles that you will need to keep your back and sciatica nerve in good health.
Apart from water exercises there are all kinds of other exercises you can gradually work towards, but before doing any kind of exercises (now that you have consulted your physician and know which exercises to do), always start out with a warm up routine of at least 5 minutes; like for example a short walk, even walking in place or the use of an exercise bike.
When you start out you probably should stick with careful back stretching exercises and then step by step build into strength building exercises fro your abdomen and back. Then you can also widen your range to some low impact aerobic exercises. With a balanced array of all of these exercises you will work many different muscle groups, which will then help you to prevent future flare ups of sciatica.
So, to put it into a couple of sentences: Sciatica and exercises go together like pie and whipped cream, if you want to see some true and lasting changes in your situation. Just be sure you have consulted your physician before starting your exercises or to self-treat your symptoms and underlying causes for your sciatica, to make sure you know which kinds of treatments you can, should and shouldn’t do.
Want to find out more about sciatic exercise, then visit Christina Meier’s site on how to choose the best sciatic exercises for your sciatica.
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