Buttock Muscles Can Cause Sciatica

Your buttock muscles (also called gluteal muscles) are large, powerful muscles.  When they become ‘too tight’ they can cause pressure on the sciatic nerve as it passes through your hip area.

The sciatic nerve is as large as your finger and is usually found behind some of the large gluteal muscles.

Nerves hate to be pressed on and so the sciatic nerve will complain by causing symptoms of pain or nervy sensations in your hip, leg or even in your foot!

Here’s the link to an article with directions on how to help those gluteal muscles relax.  If they are the cause of your sciatica it will make a big difference.

http://www.simplebackpainrelief.com/sciatica/how-to-massage-gluteal-muscles-for-back-pain-relief/

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Hip Pain Relief Naturally

I had a great time interviewing and talking with muscle expert Gini Maddocks at PainReliefRadio.com Gini always has a lot of excellent input to help listeners get rid of their pain and today was no exception.

We talked about your hip, how it moves and why you have hip pain.  Gini told us about her super-dooper pain-relieving tool that you probably already have in your own kitchen.  And then I came up with another use for it.  I’ll bet you might, too.  🙂

We had a fun talk.  I always enjoy interviewing someone who knows her stuff.

I know you will have a better understanding of your hip pain after you listen.  That’s important because it IS your body.

I also know you will gets lots of natural self-help relief techniques for the pain in your hip(s).

Here’s the link to the interview:  http://budurl.com/hiphip (<– click here)

After you listen, leave a comment here and let me know what other pain relief topics you’d like to hear.

The interview is only 30 minutes.  Don’t you owe that to yourself to get hip pain relief?  I’m thinking YES!

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Sciatica – Causes and Natural Cures of that Nervy Pain in Your Hip and Leg

Sciatica is caused by pressure on the sciatic nerve.  The pressure can be from bones or from muscle.  Most often it seems to be muscle.  The good news is the pressure can often be removed from the sciatic nerve without surgery.

Sciatic nerves are really large.

They are about the thickness of your index finger and run from the lower part of your spine through the bony hip area. The nerves pass through thick muscles in your buttocks, one on each side.

The gluteal muscles are the powerful muscles in the back of your hip (your buttocks). One of those muscles–a deeper one–is the piriformis. The piriformis muscle can be a cause of the nervy pain in your hip and/or leg. When it is, it is often called “pseudo-sciatica.” (Pseudo means false.)

If the nerve is being compressed by the spinal bones, it is Continue reading “Sciatica – Causes and Natural Cures of that Nervy Pain in Your Hip and Leg”

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Walking Can Relieve Your Back, Hip and Pelvic Pain

Does walking cause back pain?  You bet it can!  It also causes pain in your hips and pelvis IF you don’t move the way your body was designed to move.

Every week I do another episode of Pain Relief Radio.  Today we talked about how to walk to prevent or get rid of back pain.  We talked about how our walking patterns become faulty and how that causes pain.

We talked about walking with stiff knees and hips.  This kind of stiff walk contributes directly to arthritis in your hips and knees and fragile bones in your pelvis.  But bones stay strong and healthy when we use all of our muscles as they were designed to be used.

Meir Schneider wrote a great book, “The Handbook of Self-Healing, Your Personal Program for Better Health and Increased Vitality,” and I quoted lots from Meir and threw in plenty of my own thoughts, too.

Meir is a brilliant bodyworker in San Francisco.  I’m so fortunate to have taken classes from him.  There are people who understand how bodies work and what we must do if we are to be pain-free.  Meir Continue reading “Walking Can Relieve Your Back, Hip and Pelvic Pain”

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Hip Pain? Try Nordic Walking to Relieve Pain in Your Hips

If your hips hurt, you might wish to consider walking a different way.

Nordic Walking uses “walking sticks” (poles) and can help people with hip pain more than using a cane.  A cane supports you on only one side, but walking with a pole in each hand gives you support on both sides.

Using these walking poles helps propel you forward.

They also cause you to swing your arms in a good, neutral position.  When you swing your arms correctly as you walk (next to your body rather than in front of your body, and with your thumbs pointed upward as when you shake hands) you use all of your Continue reading “Hip Pain? Try Nordic Walking to Relieve Pain in Your Hips”

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Do You Have Hip Pain?

Have you ever wondered why your hips hurt?

Do you think you need a hip replacement?

Have you paid attention to where the pain in your hip is located?

Is it in the meaty back part, at the outside, or on the bone/at the joint? Is it at the inside or outside of your thigh? Is is mid-thigh on the outside of your leg?

Are there times when your hip pain is worse or not noticeable?

Answering these questions will help you determine what’s going on – why you have hip pain or discomfort – and how to get rid of it.

Having the answers to these questions will also help you explain your pain to your doctor in case you decide to talk to him or her about it.

Lately, people have been complaining about pain at the hip joint.

The hip joint is the bone that you can feel on the outside of your very upper leg. If you drop your hand down at your side, you will feel the bone somewhere around your lower arm or wrist, depending how long your arm is. What you are actually feeling is the head of your thigh bone.

Muscles and tough tissues cross over this joint.

Sometimes the bursa – a little pocket of lubrication for the joint – gets irritated. Your doctor may say you have bursitis. That can go away on its own, especially if you stop doing whatever was irritating it.

Sometimes the muscles get aggravated. This can be from pressure, like laying on your favorite side in bed all the time. It can also be from an over-stretch, like crossing your leg.

The position that would most likely cause over-stretch or strain is when you move your knee closer or past your midline. The midline is the imaginary line is the line that goes from your nose to belly button, straight down your body.

Lots of times people think they need a hip replacement. Often all they need is…

> Some really good therapeutic massage to release the muscles and tissues which have become tight around the joint. This includes the powerful gluteal, or buttock, muscles. They attach to the hip joint and if they get tight, they will pull too much across the joint and cause discomfort.

> To stop aggravating the joint. This could mean learning to sleep on your back or other side. It might mean not letting your knee move toward or across your midline.  If you’re a side sleeper, it means to prop your upper leg.

> Finding a new seat or car seat. Sometimes the outer edge of a seat will press against our hip bone, especially if we have wide bones. That can aggravate the muscles and cause hip pain.

> Getting their legs measured by a doctor, physical therapist or neuromuscular massage therapist who understands how to measure for leg length difference. One out of ten of us has a leg length difference. If we do, and if we get a correct lift for our short leg – get this – it takes the pressure off the hip of the short leg.

Sometimes there has been so much wear on a hip joint – usually from having a short leg – that the joint must be replaced.

Other times, just taking the pressure off the joint and getting some deep muscle massage will take the pain away!

Here are a couple of beneficial things we can do at home, easily, in the comfort of our bed.

> The first is to make the muscles around your hip joint move in multiple directions.

Most of the time, we only move in one or two directions. Moving in various directions will warm your muscles and make them more flexible.

> The second is to strengthen the muscles on the outside of the joint.

To do this, lie on your side and lift your top leg. Do this in a way that you can feel your hip muscle – your gluteal (butt) muscles – contract. You want to know that you are using those muscles. Those muscles should be involved in this movement.

If the cause of your discomfort was over-stretched muscles, strengthening in this way will help correct the problem. It will help get you back in balance.

Why do I say “back in balance?”

Because you used to be in balance, when you were a child.  You didn’t have hip pain then.

And you can get there again.

“Because You Deserve to Feel Better!”

 

 

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