More than likely if you are reading this you are or have suffered from acute or chronic back pain. Back pain is a very common complaint affecting upwards of 80% of the population at one point or another during their lives. The good news about acute back pain is that most people get better even without medical intervention in a few weeks to months. On the flip side, the pain can often times become intermittent with each episodes lasting a few weeks and occurring randomly over a period of many years. Chronic back pain on the other hand, frequently does not get better without some type of medical care whether that being medication, spine injections, physical therapy, regular exercise or surgery.

One of the questions I frequently get asked in my practice is what is the difference between sciatica and sciatic nerve. Many patients tell me that they have a problem with their sciatic nerve and that is why they came in to be seen. The term sciatica come from the latin ‘sciaticus’ and is used to describe pain affecting the back, hip, and outer side of the leg, caused by compression of a spinal nerve root in the lower back, often owing to degeneration of an intervertebral disk.

If you are over 30 years of age and have gone into your doctor and complained of back pain more than likely an X-ray was done. If your pain was bad enough and not letting up odds are that you had an MRI of your spine. You were probably told that you had degenerative disc disease or possibly a disc bulge that was causing your pain.