Fish oil for sciatica!!! (not even kidding)

minxyglams

Short version: 3500mg of prenatal DHA (omega-3's/fish oil) a day has almost completely cured my intense sciatica!

Loooong version: Just over a month ago, at around 31 weeks, I used a few spinningbabies.com techniques to turn little one from transverse to head down. Good news is that the exercises worked! However, the excruciating side effect was baby's head putting pressure on my sciatic nerve.

For the past month, I have literally been in agony and almost completely immobile. I have a high tolerance for pain, but this has been like mind-bending, constant pain. It took me seven minutes one night to shuffle from the bed to the bathroom and it's 30 feet away. In three weeks, I maybe left the house four times. 

Anyway, my midwife came over to my house for an appointment a week ago and I mentioned that I was trying to eat a lot of anti-inflammatory foods to try and help calm the nerve down. She had an aha moment and suggested doubling or trippling the amount of prenatal DHA (fish oil) I'm taking, because that's also a powerful anti-inflammatory.

Now, I'm totally into natural things - planning a natural home birth, eating all organic foods, etc., but I was still kinda giving her the side-eye and thinking that there was no frickin' way fish oil was gonna touch this pain.  

I've been taking three capsules a day of the Nordic Naturals Prenatal DHA throughout pregnancy, but last week I started taking six a day - which totals about 3500mg of omega 3's.

I started feeling a difference after two days. Now, after a week, I am almost a hundred percent pain free. After basically a month of inactivity and cabin fever, my husband and I walked to a restaurant a mile away for dinner last night (cabbed it back, but still!). I definitely still feel it, but it's changed to an itchy kind of pain - like when something's healing. I'm really shocked that it's worked so well, but am also SO happy about it - and it's good for baby's fast developing brain!

 Just thought I'd share in case it could help anyone else suffering from sciatica. Oh, also, when you buy DHA/fish oil, make sure you get a really high quality kind or one that is sourced from algae. It's not cheap, but the less expensive ones run the risk of containing mercury.

 Good luck ladies!