Using Lava Sand Heating Pads For Your Sciatica Pain
Most of us have probably experienced sciatica pain sometime in our life.
And we might even feel like we are never going to get relief from the pain that we experience.
But using a lava sand heating pad will help to relieve the pain. Use the heating pad for cold treatment for the first 3 to 5 days, and then use the heating pad for hot treatment for the days that come after.
Read on to find out more why sciatica pain hurts so much.
What is your sciatica?
If you are like me, every once in awhile you will help someone move or you do some other kind of service that means you are carrying some weight.
Another situation might be that you went to get a bag of food for your pets and you are carrying the 50 lbs or so bags into your house.
Whatever the situation is, typically people find one way or another to hurt their lower back.
This area in your lower back is called the sciatic nerve.
According to the Cleveland Clinic:
"The sciatic nerve is the longest and thickest (almost finger-width) nerve in the body. It’s actually made up of five nerve roots: two from the lower back region called the lumbar spine and three from the final section of the spine called the sacrum. The five nerve roots come together to form a right and left sciatic nerve. On each side of your body, one sciatic nerve runs through your hips, buttocks and down a leg, ending just below the knee. The sciatic nerve then branches into other nerves, which continue down your leg and into your foot and toes."
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/12792-sciatica#:~:text=Sciatica%20pain%20is%20caused%20by,time%20and%20self%2Dcare%20treatments.
That, in a nutshell what is what sciatic nerve is.
Major injury typically doesn't occur to the sciatic nerve.
But people can feel some pretty deep pain in the sciatic nerve without injuring it.
The pain can also come in different ways and feelings.
For some people, the pain is a shooting pain, or it's a jolt of pain.
For others, it is a stabbing or burning pain.
Also, the pain can sometimes mostly be in the legs instead of the lower back.
It can also seem to get worse when you are standing or sitting for long periods of time.
This often makes it hard to do one or the other, since you just want the pain to go away.
There are also common situations where you may be more susceptible to have sciatica pain.
These include the following:
- Current or previous injury to your back. This puts more pressure on your sciatica, so the more you move around, the more likely you are to get the pain.
- Getting older. Just as your body gets older, your body begins to wear down. So as you get older, the more likely you are to experience sciatica pain.
- Being overweight. We have what is a healthy body mass index, and if we veer too far off of that path, then that put more strain on our body. As we put more weight into our belly, that puts more strain on our back and therefore to our sciatica.
- Have a physically active job. As we started this article, if you are spending a lot of time moving heavy objects, this is going to put more strain on your body. The constant up and down motion, plus the weight, will make the sciatica more susceptible to injury and pain.
- Bad posture. Have you ever sat in a weird position at night and woken up in the middle of the night to a part of your body hurting? Well, the same is true with your sciatica. So if you are sitting in a bad way, eventually your sciatica is going to go through some pain.
How to prevent sciatica pain
Now that you know what the sciatica is and what causes it, then we can cover how you can avoid it in the future.
First, work on your posture.
Make sure you are sitting up in your chair and not slouch.
This also means that your shoulders are back and your chest is puffed out.
Having better posture means you are putting less stress on your back, especially your lower back,
Plus, it just looks better when you sit this way.
Second, maintain a healthy body weight.
There are many health benefits to maintaining a healthy body weight.
Most of those things include your body being able to work the way it is supposed to.
And this includes not having sciatica pain.
So maintaining a healthy body weight means that you are don't have extra weight in your belly.
And no extra weight means you aren't putting extra strain on your sciatica.
Third, exercise regularly.
Not only does this help you to maintain a healthy body weight like we talked about in our second point, but it also helps you to work on your core.
The core is one of the most important parts of your body, as you could probably determine from the name of it.
According to Harvard:
"The core is a group of muscles that stabilizes and controls the pelvis and spine (and therefore influences the legs and upper body). Core strength is less about power and more about the subtleties of being able to maintain the body in ideal postures — to unload the joints and promote ease of movement. For the average person, this helps them maintain the ability to get on and off the floor to play with their children or grandchildren, stand up from a chair, sit comfortably at a desk, or vacuum and rake without pain. For athletes, it promotes more efficient movement, therefore preventing injury and improving performance. Having a strong or stable core can often prevent overuse injuries, and can help boost resiliency and ease of rehab from acute injury. The core also includes the pelvic floor musculature, and maintaining core stability can help treat and prevent certain types of incontinence."
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/understanding-and-improving-core-strength-2018090414662#:~:text=The%20core%20is%20a%20group,and%20promote%20ease%20of%20movement.
So you can imagine, if you are strengthening those portions of the body that help you go get up and down, then you are helping to prevent sciatica pain.
Fourth, be careful walking.
Sciatica pain is tied closely with your spin.
If you hurt your spine in any way, then that could lead to more sciatica pain.
So if you are careful with how you walk, and make sure you don't fall down, this will increase the chances you won't get sciatica pain.
Using lava sand heating pad for the pain
Now that we've covered some in depth information into what your sciatica is, how we get pain there, and how to avoid it, we can cover how to address the pain that you have.
First, you are going to want to use your lava sand heating pain for cold treatment.
So start off by placing the heating pad in the freezer.
And leave it in there for a few hours.
Then you can pull it out to start using it.
Lay down in your bed or sit in a place when you can keep the heating pad in one place for up to 30 minutes.
Once you have chosen your position, leave the cold lava sand heating pad in place for 20 to 30 minutes.
Using the cold pad will slow down the blood flow to the area.
This in turn will reduce pain and swelling to the area.
So for the first few days, this is the most important thing you can do for your body.
And it will allow your body to heal.
After those first few days, then you can move to heat.
Warm the lava sand heating pad in the microwave for about 3 minutes.
Then take it out and place it where your sciatica pain is happening.
Leave it there for 20 to 30 minutes.
Any longer, and you could up having some skin issues in that spot as well.
So make sure you only have it there no longer than 30 minutes.
After the 30 minutes, take it off and wait 2 hours before you repeat the process again.
Applying cold treatment for the first few days and then move over to heat treatment afterwards is a great way to keep the pain away and also allow the sciatica pain to heal.
Other treatment methods
Besides applying cold and heat treatment, you can also help the sciatica pain by doing a few others things.
The first of these is doing light stretches.
A lot of times when we feel pain in our muscles it is because those muscles are strained or just plain tight.
And if we go some light stretching, that could help loosen the tight muscles.
One of these stretches could be touching your toes.
Sit on the ground then put your legs out straight with your toes facing up.
Then take your arms and reach out to your toes as best as you can.
Don't rock back and forth when reaching for your toes, just reach out and hold the position for up to 10 seconds.
If you rock back and forth while trying to touch your toes, you could be hurting your lower back even more.
You can also do exercises that help to strengthen your core.
This could include leg raises, sit ups, crunches, etc.
Also to help relief the pain, you could take some over the counter pain medication.
But keep in mind, this will not fix the problem.
This will just mask the pain.
If you really want to get rid of your sciatica pain forever, stretching and strengthening your core is the way to go.
Summary
Sciatica pain is a pain that a lot of us encounter.
Especially as we get older in age.
So it might not be something you can avoid.
But having a lava sand heating pad there to help with the pain would be a great thing for you.
Just remember for the first few days you treat the pain will the lava sand heating pad used as a cold pack.
And after those first few days, you switch over to it being a heating pad.
Then throw in some light stretching to get those muscles loose.