Most of us at some point in time have sciatic nerve pain. How do you know when you have sciatic nerve pain? That’s easy. You have a shooting pain from your buttocks and down your leg to your foot.

This pain is caused when your sciatic nerve is pinched. Your sciatic nerve is located in your lower back and the pain that you feel radiating down your leg is worse than the sciatic pain in your back. You will also feel numbness or a tingling sensation. So, what can you do to help with your sciatic nerve pain?

Below are three ways to help you temporarily stop the pain:

1. Infrared Heat Therapy

This process uses an infrared lamp to reduce inflammation and to relieve pain in the affected area. Some other great benefits of using infrared heat therapy are to improve your circulation, reduce the healing time for wounds and it also relieves stress and depression, which is huge. The purpose of the heat therapy is to raise your body’s internal temperature. Infrared heat is also used for a wide range of health concerns.

The heat, when directed at the lower part of your back where your sciatic nerve is located, will help to temporarily reduce the inflammation surrounding this area and thus will reduce the pain. While this method is very effective in reducing pain, please know that this is just temporary.

2. Pain Relief Cream

Pain relief creams, like the heat therapy, are temporary solutions to relieve your sciatic nerve pain. You would rub the cream into your skin around the painful area. These pain relief creams are sold over the counter and they contain different ingredients:

• Counter irritant creams – These creams use either menthol or camphor as their main ingredient. What they do is to create a diversion in your mind. The diversion is a burning or cooling sensation and all this does is take your mind off the pain and puts it on the burning or cooling sensation.

• Creams that contain Salicylates are the ingredients that are also found in aspirin and they actually give aspirin its pain relieving qualities. Drug companies put Salicylates in their pain-relieving creams to help with pain in the joints. If you had pain in your knees or elbows, this type of cream might work for you. However, if you are allergic to aspirin, you should not use these creams.

• Capsaicin is the main ingredient in hot chili peppers. Believe it or not, this is one of the most effective ingredients to relieve pain when applied to your skin. When you first put this cream on your skin, you will feel a warm tingling sensation. The only problem with using this cream is that you may need to use it from a few days to a few weeks before you really feel any relief from your pain.

However, like anything else, there are some risks when using these pain relieving creams.

• You should never, under any circumstances apply these creams to an area that has an open wound.

• You should never use these creams with a heating pad because you may cause a severe burn on your skin.

• You should never use these creams under a tight bandage.

• You need to make sure that you wash your heads thoroughly after using these creams because you don’t want to get any of the cream in your eyes.

• Don’t use the creams that contain Salicylates if you are allergic to aspirin.

3. Natural anti-inflammatory

The purpose of the anti-inflammatory is to stop the inflammation. When you stop the inflammation, you stop the pain. Some examples of when you would have some type of inflammation would be if you burned yourself, or scraped your knee, got stung by a bee, or you bruised yourself. When you injure yourself, your body creates a protection of fluid around the hurt area. Sometimes when we are injured, we also injure the nerves. No matter what we injure, this causes inflammation and pain. So, if we stop the inflammation, we stop the pain.

It is extremely important to remember that you should use a natural anti-inflammatory. Some of the anti-inflammatory drugs on the market have severe and life threatening side effects so make sure that you know what the side effects are before you take any of these types of drugs.

These are 3 ways to help with your sciatic nerve pain. Remember that it is very important for you to consult with your physician to determine the cause of your sciatic nerve pain before using any type of pain medication.