Many women complain of sciatica during pregnancy. But this is rarely a real sciatica. Read here, which causes deep back pain in pregnancy and what you can do about it!
Sciatica & Pregnancy
In almost every second pregnancy, women complain of deep back pain. However, a true sciatica (colloquially called “sciatica”) occurs in less than one percent of pregnancies. In most cases, lower back pain in pregnant women remains unexplained in detail. However, medical experts suspect that various factors may interact during pregnancy and provoke pain in the sciatic area:
- Pregnancy-related weight gain: It causes the center of gravity to shift to the front. This puts more weight on the lower spine.
- hormonal changes: Pregnancy hormones cause the band structures to loosen, especially in the lower back and pelvis. This means a loss of stability in these regions. As a result, bones (for example, at the sacroiliac joint) may shift minimally. This can lead to reflex muscle tension.
- Venous stasis: When lying down, the uterus increasingly presses on the inferior vena cava with the growing child. This triggers a backflow of venous blood in the small pelvis. The blood accumulation can press on the sciatic nerve.
- Pressure of the growing uterus on the tissue over the sciatic nerve
In addition, the sciatic nerve in the pelvis during birth strongly pressed or stretched and subsequently cause discomfort.
Sciatica & Pregnancy: Therapy
In general, the attending physician often recommends painkillers for sciatica. In pregnancy, however, such drugs should not or only be taken to a limited degree for the benefit of the child. A physical therapy is therefore the better option in pregnancy:
Sciatic pain can often be alleviated with muscle-relaxing measures such as massages or heat treatments. Also physiotherapeutic exercises are useful. They train the strength of the spinal column muscles and thus relieve the lumbar spine in their work. In addition, a physiotherapist can teach pregnant women back-friendly behavior (for example, when lifting loads).
Sometimes, sciatica also happens in pregnancy alternative methods used, for example, acupuncture. Interested women should discuss the use of such methods with an experienced physician.
Sciatica & Pregnancy: Prevention
Even before pregnancy, women can prevent back pain: Anyone who exercises regularly while exercising the core muscles is better equipped for the special orthopedic stress of pregnancy. So if you plan to get pregnant, you should strengthen your muscle corset early on. That can be a painful one Sciatica in pregnancy prevent.