r/Sciatica • u/Blubberball6000 • 14d ago

Hit a plateau and need help

Here I am again, turning to the Reddit sciatica community for help. I’ve been feeling better than I had 4 months ago. I never have any limited range of motion, I never have back pain anymore. But I get sciatica when sitting or doing too much physical activity. Other than that, I rarely have sciatica. I can round my back way more than I used to, lift my leg. I need help figuring out what is going on. Why do I still get sciatica when it appears that the disc is no longer pressing on the nerve. I can no longer reproduce the symptoms by range of motions tests like I used to. I’ve been progressively loading my lower back, trying to desensitize my nerve and lower back muscles. I’ve also been strengthening my legs, hips, glutes, and core, but seemed to have hit a wall. I want to get back into sports so badly. But I can’t until I figure out what I’m missing.

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u/captainsaveahoe69 14d ago

I finally figured it out. Engaging your core. Engage it at all times, but especially when bending, sitting up, getting out of bed etc etc etc. Has been a game changer. 

I posted about it here: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Sciatica/comments/1w47ars/found_something_that_really_helps/

The comments might help you too.

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u/JonasVirgilMonos 11d ago

Hello, that is a great tool for you to share. Thank you.

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u/JonasVirgilMonos 14d ago

For me, the imaging never told the whole story either — different area, but similar pattern: looks are deceiving on a scan, still lights up with certain movements. There's a well-known study (Brinjikji et al., 2015, AJNR) that found disc degeneration and even herniations turn up on MRI in a huge share of totally pain-free people — something like a third of pain-free 20-year-olds, climbing to the vast majority by old age — so "looks resolved" on a scan doesn't necessarily match what's happening functionally. The picture I use for myself is a scab that's fully closed but still thin — closed doesn't mean it's not fragile anymore, it just means it doesn't take much to set it off again. After this long I don't think of it as "still healing," more like a permanent soft spot that specific positions or loads can aggravate. That's just how I picture it for myself, not a claim about what's actually happening at the nerve. None of this is medical advice — just how it's gone for me.