What Causes Lower Back and Pelvic Pain?

Maybe you've experienced it before. A sharp and stabbing pain in your lower back or hips. Maybe you're even experiencing it right now. What's going on here and what can you do about it?

First of all, I want to let you know that I'm not a medical professional, so I can't say for certain what may be causing your pain, but in my experience, most lower back and hip pain is the result of what is called Sciaitca.

I first experienced Sciatica several years ago while I was finishing up my senior year of college. It started as a dull pain in my right hip. At first, I just thought that I had slept in an awkward position or something and just brushed it off. But over the next week, the pain increased to the point where I could barely walk without having to stop to rest and let the pain die down. At this point, I went and saw a university doctor who explained to me what Sciatica is.

Essentially, there is a nerve in your body called the Sciatic nerve, which runs from your lower back down to your legs and feet. It is the longest nerve in the body. When your Sciatic nerve gets trapped somewhere, then you will experience Sciatica.

Sciatica usually presents itself as a sharp and intense pain in the lower back, hips, buttocks, legs, or feet. However, it can sometimes be a numb or tingling feeling like you might feel when your leg is asleep.

What might cause sciatica? There are a lot of things that could lead to this condition. It is pretty much anything that puts pressure on the Sciatic nerve. In my case, it was my Piriformis muscle. This small muscle is located in the pelvis just above the Sciatic nerve. When the Piriformis becomes irritated it may contract or spasm and crush the Sciatic nerve.

Other common causes of Sciatica are bulging or herniated discs in the lower back, tension in other muscles in the lower back or hips such as your Psoas muscles, or Spinal Stenosis (a progressive narrowing of the spinal canal which puts pressure on spinal nerves).

But when you boil everything down, most of these causes are the direct result of muscle imbalances in the body. A muscle imbalance occurs anytime that a muscle is either too strong or too weak. This results in your body's alignment being shifted in order to compensate. When your body isn't in alignment, then pressure is placed on bones, nerves and inter-vertebral discs, which will cause many of the conditions that result in Sciatica.

So, then the way to relieve most cases of Sciatica is to balance out the muscles of the back and correct the alignment problems that cause pain. Most muscle imbalances can be taken care of with stretching exercises that help to loosen tense muscles and strengthen weak muscles. These stretching exercises take time to really work and it may be a several days or weeks before you start to see the benefits, but in the long run living without pain is a fair trade off.