How to Cure Buttock Pain
I don’t have to tell you how painful and annoying buttock pain is if you have had it for any length of time. Buttock pain is usually caused by the sciatic nerve (and is sometimes called sciatica), which comes out at your low back, runs down your buttock, then down the outside front part of your leg all the way to the foot. If you want to confirm that your butt pain is caused by your sciatic nerve, put your three longest fingers together, place them stiffly against your hip joint on the side of your hip, then run them down the side of your leg toward your knee while pressing fairly hard. If this is really painful, then your sciatic nerve is what is acting up.
Usually sciatica affects one side of the body. The pain may be described as dull, burning or sharp. Sometimes you will have shooting pains intermittently down the low back, buttock, or the side of the leg. Other symptoms may include tingling and numbness. Sitting may be painful and difficult, as may attempts to stand up from sitting. Coughing and sneezing often intensifies the pain.
The most difficult part about sciatica is that there is no good diagnosis for its cause. Orthopedists will tell you that there must be some ‘abnormality’ in your spine, which is pinching the nerve. Sometimes chiropractic can help, but any pain that has become chronic needs to be looked at with a more open mind. These are some of the easiest cures for sciatica that doctors typically overlook:
Proper hydration – I could write an entire set of books on the diseases and conditions caused by chronic dehydration. Pain is one of the first symptoms of a dehydrated body. Your body needs water for a multitude of purposes, and pain is one of the clearest indicators that you are not drinking enough water. To see if drinking more water will help your level of pain, try this experiment: for 5 days, drink at least 3 quarts of fresh, filtered water daily. Not tea. Not coffee. Not soft drinks. Just water. See if your pain (and other symptoms) decreases. For the first day or so, you may have to pee every hour. This is a very good indication that you are dehydrated: your body, when dehydrated, is like a desert – when it starts raining (hydrating) in the desert, at first the water runs off in a flash flood. It takes quite a bit of hydration to get the body’s cells ready for more hydration. Just stick with it and eventually you will get rehydrated. Then, make it a habit to drink at least 2 quarts of water daily to not get dehydrated again. Headaches are another clear symptom of dehydration.
Stress reduction – The gluteus maximus and piriformis muscles are located in your butt and lay on top of your sciatic nerve. Many people hold stress in these muscles and the tension that they create often aggravate the sciatic nerve. Physical therapists will often recommend stretching exercises, but the origin of your pain, your stress, will still be there. Stress usually has obvious causes, such as: family, work, or money concerns. But there are hidden stresses in our lives, sometimes hiding in our unconscious as thoughts and emotions. If you have been suffering from chronic pain, especially in the butt, there is a good chance that you are holding some emotions in and expressing them through your tense muscles. Learning mindbody techniques for releasing unconscious emotions often relieves chronic pain, sometimes overnight.
I love our common sayings that we have about our bodies: ‘he is a pain in the butt.’ Having a pain in the butt and being a pain in the butt are most likely closely connected. Stress (he’s a pain in the butt) can cause a pain in the butt. Drinking plenty of water, and learning to relieve your stress, and release repressed negative feelings, can relieve your chronic pain quicker and easier than any stretching exercises.
For more information see my bestselling eBook Free From Buttock Pain
February 8th, 2010 at 3:55 am
Thank you for the articles. My back is giving me constant agony and any advice helps