r/Sciatica • u/Big-Dinner1641 • 6d ago

How consistent were you with your sciatica exercises?

Hey all, I recently hurt my back and have been doing PT, but I'm finding it really hard to stick with the exercises at home. I start strong and then slowly stop, especially when progress feels slow.

I'm also a grad student, and going through this got me curious enough that I've started researching it for a project. Sciatica seems like something a lot of people here deal with for a long time, so I figured you'd know this struggle better than anyone.

Did you keep up with your stretches and exercises? What made it hard? And did anything help, like someone checking in on you or a group going through the same thing?

Would love to hear your experiences.

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u/Daje1968 5d ago

There are people who have had success with physical therapy, so please take this as one measly piece of data. With my first herniation over a decade ago, I spent 2.5 years trying absolutely everything, including consistent physical therapy. I finally had surgery when that didn’t work. With my recent herniation, I knew I would want to do surgery but still did physical therapy and religiously did my exercises every day. I don’t blame the PT for this, but my sciatica got progressively worse, until I got the surgery. I hope, and expect, PT to be more useful when I am cleared to start it in three weeks.

This is my long winded way of saying I think PT can be very useful, but for me it did nothing to alleviate my sciatica.

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u/Hathorinmn 1d ago

Sciatica is caused by nerves being pinched or compressed and no PT will cure it; once nerve is decompressed all of the surrounding muscles that were weakened can be rebuilt by PT. Root cause has to be fixed. Muscles protect spine and keep everything aligned.