Intractable sciatica can destroy lives and make a normal existence quite impossible. Intractable is a very strong word and when used to describe sciatica symptoms, one can actually tangibly feel the suffering of patients who must deal with such horrific expressions of chronic pain.
Intractable pain has become a growing burden throughout the healthcare system year over year. More people suffer from chronic pain now than ever before and there are many reasons theorized to exist for this catastrophic occurrence. We have been researching chronic pain, as well as educating patients and providing free advocacy services for them for over 15 years. We truly understand the collateral consequences of sciatica and empathize with anyone who must suffer the daily hell of unresponsive symptoms.
This patient guide delves into the reasons why sciatica can become intractable and why its expressions are so severe. If you have been disabled by sciatica and are wearing thin from the nonstop torment you must endure, then this helpful resource will provide some important food for thought that might just lead you to that elusive permanent cure.
Intractable Sciatica Epidemic
Intractable symptoms of sciatica are just one facet of the epidemic of chronic pain that is spreading across our planet. Chronic pain used to be quite rare, but has grown in incidence and severity over the past 6 decades, with exponential growth during the past 2 decades. In fact, one could correlate the availability of the internet with the spread of chronic pain, but what is the relationship?
Since we see so few cases of structurally-motivated chronic pain and tons of cases of mindbody-enactment, it is obvious that people are being subjected to the idea of chronic pain and are then becoming affected by it. The power of the nocebo effect has been long proven in medical science and in this age of information, people actually expect to suffer pain due to virtually every circumstance in life. Advertising tells us that we must suffer, subliminally if not directly. What are these ads for? Mostly, the very same medical interventions that fail to relieve sciatica pain and every other chronic health issue…
Getting older? Pain. Participating in sports? Pain. Working? Pain. It is certainly possible to experience pain from any of these sources, as well as from countless others. However, most structural pain responds well to indicated care. Chronic sciatica pain scoffs at treatment and this is because the underlying diagnosis is virtually always wrong. In the majority of cases, chronic pain is blamed on structural abnormality, while the true explanation for pain is not at all structural. We know this to be 100% true, since these painful expressions respond very well to knowledge therapy, which is a completely non-physical treatment. Meanwhile, the same conditions do not respond well to the diversity of traditional healthcare practices employed against them, including drugs, injections and surgery.
Sciatica Factsheet
Intractable sciatica defies treatment for a good reason. In virtually all patients, some lumbar spinal abnormality is implicated as the origin of pain. In most cases, this is a herniated disc, although it may also be an abnormality in spinal curvature, spondylolisthesis, spinal stenosis or spinal arthritis, as well as other possible causes. Regardless, most patients with these structural diagnoses do not recover. Instead, they suffer chronic pain that ruins their lives, despite being in active treatment and often having more than one surgical intervention. Why does this happen? Why do most treatments fail? The logical answer is misdiagnosis.
The majority of all chronic pain sufferers hold dear their precious diagnoses, despite blaming treatment after treatment for failing them. Few patients have the presence of mind to question the accuracy of the diagnosis, since they have seen “evidence” that their condition exists on medical imaging studies. They saw that unusual curvature, disc degeneration or herniated disc with their own eyes. What they do not consider is the simple fact that virtually all of these structural abnormalities are completely normal and are rarely the source of any pain whatsoever. This is why treatments have failed. Therapy is simply not being directed at the correct source process. This is an almost universally applicable truth that we have witnessed year over year as chronic pain researchers, educators and advocates, as well as in our individual clinical practices.
Intractable Sciatica Solutions
Once a patient awakens to the idea that their diagnosis might not be sound, it is relatively easy to get them on the right path towards a cure. First, they begin to realize that their symptoms do not match the clinical expectation of their diagnosis in the first place. In most patients, symptoms are far too diverse in location, expression and duration to possible come from the diagnosed condition, especially after the condition is “successfully” treated with surgery, yet the pain endures.
Next, when a patient begins to explore their other diagnostic and treatment options, most will see the validity of a nonstructural diagnosis. They will “see themselves” in the personality model for people who suffer chronic pain due to mindbody causation. They will feel foolish that they did not realize this fact earlier, especially if they already have suffered for years and had unnecessary surgery on their spine.
Regardless of what they have been through, how long they have suffered or what was told to them originally to explain their pain, most people with chronic and intractable sciatica can recover. They just need to be placed on the right path towards relief, instead of pursuing a solution for an anatomical “problem” that does not truly exist. Sure, structural abnormality may be present, but as the greatest minds in medicine have long said: “Atypical structure does not accurately predict pain”.
Treat the actual source of pain and it will ameliorate. This is a fact proven by medical science for generations. Until the right source is discovered, any treatment will qualify as a witch hunt and will leave the patient damaged, hopeless and frustrated with their suffering. Once this cycle can be broken, relief is literally just around the corner.
