DoctorOz: No-Pill Sciatica Pain Solution with Dr. Oz

Uh sciatica almost half of you will experience it at some point and let me tell you it is a huge pain in the butt. I know personally in fact it's also a huge pain in your back, your legs, pretty much your entire lower body. The pain from sciatica can be excruciating but the good news is we have a no pill pain solution for you today so you can get back on your game and stop getting on your nerves. Joining me is renowned physical therapist Peggy Brill. She's actually taking care of me when I get back pain. You know doing surgery or hunched over the patient you'll get all kinds of issues happening to your back. She's a practicing physical therapist. How often do people like me come in there moaning and groaning about lower back pain? Doctor this is such a great thing to talk about. So many people, I would say 85 to 90 percent of people have sciatica at some point in their life. All right so show everyone this really cool test. This is an idea that she came up with that helps her figure out if patients are having pain from sciatica or not because not all back pain sciatica. Right, correct. So sciatica is the biggest nerve in your body, comes from five segments L4, L5, S1, S2 and S3. It comes down, comes right through the buttocks, goes down the leg. Anything below the knee is obviously sciatica. Some people have neuropathy. It shows up in different ways but one of the ways and especially we learn this through telehealth is how do we test it? We look at, okay first of all, first thing I say to my patients is let me see you walk on your heels. Can you walk on your heels? Okay that's a quick test. Then can you walk on your tippy toes? All right and then I'm going to look at, all right let me see what it looks like when you bend down. Can you bend over? Touch your toes. Can you come up? Can you bend backwards? Do you have any obstruction to motion in either of those directions? That's a quick test and then the one thing we do is say let me look at your stability. Can you stand on one leg? What does that look like? Are you dropping a hip down? Are you losing balance? Is one side better than the other? And those are quick indicators of what's going on that's sciatica. I love it. So it's quick, easy to figure out. Doesn't have to be painful. Just do it gently. Okay our first no pill pain solution coming over here. This is going to work for sciatica because it's an anti-inflammatory helper for your breakfast. It is called the anti-inflammatory pina chia parfait. Which is great. Pineapple and chia seeds are like key anti-inflammatories. We mix it with coconut milk, coconut flakes, banana, ginger and ice. So show me the first part. This is critical. The chia is great because it's got to make it. So you're going to put the chia in a bowl. You're going to add the coconut milk. It's going to come up to this kind of consistency in about 30 minutes or so. Yeah about 30 minutes and you're just going to mix that up and while you're mixing that and letting that sit you're going to take pineapple put that into the blender. As much as you want. Throw a banana in there. You can throw in the lemon juice. You've got ginger. You got ice. You're going to mix it up. Even if you have back pain you can do this. Yeah I mean look part of back pain is inflammation, spasms, pain. Okay so we want to get down inflammation drinking a good breakfast. What do you think? Okay. The appearance is quite interesting. Now just to make this you pour the chia this stuff in first. Fill the bottom half of the glass. Then you put your blended material above it and then add a little bit of these coconut flakes on top to your heart's desire. Oh that's very good. Very good. Here's the thing. This concoction it tastes so good you don't even realize that all the ingredients are good for you. This is so great especially like people who have chronic back pain like degenerative disc disease or spinal stenosis which is an inflammatory process to start looking at nutritionally what you can do to quiet down the inflammation in your body. You're going to impress all your friends because they all have sciatica too. They'll be craving this from you. And it's beautiful. Next Peggy's very much into fire and ice. That's her personality too by the way. We won't get into that here. What do you mean by fire and ice? Well I love using modalities like heat and cold. Now it doesn't cure the sciatica. You have to do that through movements and through stabilization but you have pain. You have inflammation. You have spasms. Nine out of ten times I'm going to say use ice. Okay put that ice pack on your low back and I love to put heat and this is what I do for my patients. I put that on their thoracic spine, on their rib cage, around their neck. Yes because I want them to relax from heat. I want their muscle spasms to calm down but I also want the anti-inflammatory and analgesic that the ice adds that extra. And how about all these gels? Gels are great. I mean look you put that on it's going to it's going to damper down some of this reception of pain and it's also great to get in there. Massage. I mean massage feels great. It's you know you feel the tissues get tight and adhered. I use this a trick my wife Lisa to massage in my back under the guise of putting on a medicated hot and cold. I'm really just getting the massage in there. All right let's get to our no pain solving stretches. Those are just to deal with the issues up high but we're going to deal with actually deal with the problem itself. These are three steps that will help you with movement. They'll help you stabilize your your lower back and give you some relief. We brought one of my viewers Teresa in who suffers from sciatica along with me. So describe what your pain is like. It's unbearable. It starts off moderate and then it slowly and slowly goes into more of a severe burn. More of a intense aching and it goes from the lower back all the way down to that right side of the buttock all the way down to the leg. I really don't like to use any medications. I'm more of a naturalist but sometimes I do have to reach for that med. Well I took my jacket off because you're ready to go now. These are the tips you're going to use to actually deal with the back pain so it goes away. The other ones will help you with the symptoms but this will actually deal with the underlying problem. So Peggy's first stretch is called the press up. Yes the press up. This comes from Robin McKenzie. The McKenzie method who I was trained in and I've had five herniated discs. No surgeries no medications and cured it. Your first usually you get on your belly you have your arms by your side take a breath in then you come up onto your elbows and then you expand into what's called the press up and this is the first treatment we do to correct sciatica and since it's reoccurring about 90 percent of the time this is something you do for the rest of your life. Okay so simple easy to do. Get sort of a sphinx position and put yourself back up. Okay next thing. This is all about state. Now we're doing this little stabilizing deal. This is a stabilizing side step but you say it's critical because it deals with the balance. It's very critical because when we look at just like we did the single leg stance to see if you're uneven which can create like hip problem knee problem foot problems all kinds of things that happen from sciatica that people don't realize it's coming from their back. You start side stepping okay and when you do that you want to see that your pelvis is level and equal. That's going to activate the muscle called your gluteus medius which is your shunt muscle for your hip and that will start to stabilize your back. So I say tell people you're brushing your teeth do it side to side. You're standing waiting for the elevator. You're on a call waiting for somebody to pick up. Just stand up from your desk at home and step side to side. You still call people? All right the last deal is the belly blasters. Get our chairs over here. Okay and the proper way to pick up a chair. Oh teach us that. You're going to move furniture especially because that's usually where people get in trouble lifting bending slouching. Okay so when you lift you want to go into like a sumo kind of wrestler position wide base of support stick your rear end out so there's a hollow in it put the object obviously straight in front of you so you're not twisting and lift up using your legs and your glutes and then when you put it down Dr. Oz you got to put it down in the same position. Okay okay and then when you sit down sit up nice and straight like almost keeping that hollow in your low back. When people sit for long periods I like them to have a little throw pillow or something in their back and what you're going to do is you're going to put your hands on your knees and you're going to imagine you're lifting your knees up in the air but there's no movement. It's an isometric contraction which is the strongest contraction your body can make. You push on your knees straighten your arms push your shoulder blades down and back pull the knees in towards your chest and suck your navel in towards your spine and that works the girdle muscle the transverse abdominus which is the girdle muscle for your back. What do you think Teresa? Oh my gosh already I feel my back loosening up which is brand new for me. Awesome. Mobile and stable that's the key. Well I appreciate you coming with us. Thank you. Like everyone else in America start doing them and actually yes.