Give it time, don’t try to do too much.
Start on NATURAL anti-inflammatories. Like Tumeric, and Omega-3, and there are a bunch of other natural ones out there.
Also, use Vick’s Vapo-Rub or a stronger sports hot-cold rub-on in the whole general area about 3x daily.
Just using NASIDS will only do so much, and you will start having problems if you stay on that much NASIDs for a long time. So mix in some natural.
Also, after about 3 months and the pain is minimal instead of constant, start login range of motion while still staying on the natural anti-inflamatories.
Keep to easy stretching for now.
My wife was down with sciatica for months. Medication, PT, Chiropractic and an exercise physiologist helped but she couldn’t get back to her normal activities.
With much reluctance, she finally got an epidural steroid injection, it wasn’t a cure by itself, but relieved the pain enough, the Therapist was able to improve her back strength, with improved strength, she was able to resume normal activities and over time, the pain is now intermittent and not debilitating.
I would recommend talking to your doc and get a referral to PT, if that doesn’t help, get evaluated by a pain doc. Unless there is evidence of nerve damage (can’t hold your stool, empty your bladder, or muscle wasting in your leg), avoid surgeons.
Avoid narcotics, they don’t work long term and can end up causing addiction or even worse, addiction with worsened pain. Occasional use of a muscle relaxer can help but AVOID Valium and Soma. They are not good muscle relaxers and can also have addiction issues. If your doc is OK with Valium or Soma for back pain, you may want to look for someone with more experience dealing with back pain.
Good luck! The odds are with you 90% of back pain, even sciatic will get better over time and without surgery. try to stay optomistic and keep moving.
If you have a pool, get in it. Exercising with the weight off your spine is healthy and usually benificial.
I had a very bad case at the same time I also had colitis, a double and very painful problem. The Docs could do nothing but prescribe pain pills but they were not stopping the pain, front and back. I went to an acupuncturist in desperation and had both acupressure and acupuncture. After a four-hour treatment, all my pains went away, I felt like a new man and neither malady ever came back. I took four more treatments and each one helped me be calmer and more effective in dealing with a very stressful job. It may not work for everyone, but for me it was the best treatment ever.
My guess is you need some actual muscle relaxants. Painkillers in general will reduce inflammation (and of course pain) but if the upset muscles are actually squeezing a nerve (frequent cause of sciatica) then muscle relaxants will target that. Can you see a doc and maybe get a Rx for that?
1st, why are you asking this on a web forum?
2nd, Only an MRI will show exactly what is going on.
3rd, you better get into a ortho doctor.
4th, If that is pain that is running down the back of your leg into your toes, then you have a pinched nerve.
5th, If you are older, your disc’s become hard and if damaged, they will not slip back into place.
How do I know? Because I had my L5 S1 fused in 95 because if I didnt, I would have become crippled because the spine will fuse itself with a big chance of the nerve being pinched completely off.
These days, they can fix that without the radical surgery I had to go through...it is nearly out patient now days.
Many find relief using an inversion table to let the spine decompress and possibly allow the nerves to get back in the right place.
Find decent used tables on craigsist.
I took Tylenol for years for a variety of things and just thought that my body never responded well to pain killers.
Then I tried 800mg of Ibuprofen for a toothache as suggested by my dentist.
Amazing. The pain was gone for about six hours. Would not have believed it had I not experienced it.
Try it just to see if it makes a difference. I would not take this amount regularly but if it does help then take it long enough to get the pain worked out.
find a GOOD acupuncturist and/or a GOOD Rolfer.
either one can work miracles for this condition.
(1)Do a walletectomy. That is, if you carry your billfold on the hip, it twists your lower back Keep your billfold in a side jacket or pant pocket.
(2) Ibuprofen only, not principally as a "pain" medicine, bu as an anti-inflammatory.
(3) NO HOT PACKS! These only aggravate inflammation. Cold packs only, helps together with ibuprofen to diminish inflammation so healing can start to take place.
(4) NO straining exercises! This undoes the reattachment and healing! No exercises until healing is complete. The back muscles can get relief by lying on your stomach and resting your elevated trunk by leaning in your forearms to arch your back. This completely removes streaa from the muscles in the small of your back.
(5) The problems causing low back painmay be aggravated by tense neck muscles and strained vertebrae. Nod your head three times from erect down to the right, then three times to the left, then three times forward, then three times to the rear. Do this ecery three or four hours to free up your neck vertebrae.
(6) Sleep on your side, but place a fat pillow between your knes to relieve the back muscles.
(7) Athletes have racks where they can hang from their heels, thus the hung body weight relieves pressure on your joints long enough to help heal ligaments. (8) Do not let pain pills or muscle relaxants or anti-inflammatory medicines give you the idea that now you can now increase body activity . . . until more pain sets in due to more damage that the medicines can no longer relieve. That is contraindicated. Take the pills and just rest, avoiding stress. It is after the healing has taken place that exercise can strengthen the muscle and ligaments when the Wlliams Low Back Exercises are not so vigorous as to reintroduce painful damage.
(9) NEVER do full situps. Only take them to the point of raising the shoulders off the floor, not the whole trunk.
(10) When enough healing tahes place, you can do pushups on the stairs with your feet on the ;anging and your hand on the steps.
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(Incorporating advice from a wise chiropractor and a very experienced professor of treatment of athletes at the local university, as applied to myself. When you begin to feel fit again, go to the local karate instructor and get the illustrated sheet of their warmup exercises, whic will be bvery helpful in keeping muscle tone.)
Stretches are the best: but I ruptured a disk down there and required surgery.
Do whatever you can (recommend *non*-impact!) to lose weight:
give up carbs and swimming is probably best to start. And, under the care of a sports medicine doc, find a way to do exercises to build muscle especially in the core.
& Prayers up, too.
GO TO A CHIROPRACTOR!!!
PILLS WON’T FIX IT!!!
IF YOU NEED HELP FINDING A GOOD ONE FREEPMAIL ME.
I specialize in back pain. We have no doctor patient relationship, but here is my advice that you should do today...and then follow up on tomorrow.
Ordinarily, seeing a doctor is helpful, but not in the case of back pain where most doctors are clueless, plus since you’re seeing a PT, and getting meds, it means you’ve seen a doctor. Doctor’s treating back pain are great in getting you to “feel” better, but not getting you better.
I doubt that you have true sciatica....so here’s something to think about...
By far, most back pain is mechanical in origin, not muscular, not inflammatory. The fact that whomever is treating you with pills is clear, that they have you miss diagnosed.
Assuming they’ve ruled out the red flags of your pain, eg fracture, cancer, metabolic, neuromuscular etc, then it’s a good bet that you are suffering from a “derangement” of your disk.
I WOULD STRONGLY SUGGEST THAT YOU GO TO THE MCKENZIE INSTITUTE OF NORTH AMERICA WEB SITE, AND FIND A DIPLOMAED THERAPIST IN YOUR AREA, THEN TRANSFER YOUR THERAPY THERE.
In the meantime, today, try lying prone, (ie face down on your belly), on the floor for several minutes, and see if that immediately alleviates your leg pain. If it does, then rise up on your elbows, as if you’re watching tv...
If after a few minutes your pain in your leg subsides, and moves into the middle of your back then you’re half way there, and it shows that your problem is in the disk.
The next step would be to do a press up, extending your arms and rising up from the waist up. Some people call this a girl’s push up. Do about five of these, then resume a prone position and see how you feel.
If your pain does not go away or gets worse, then stop these positions, and see the McKenzie therapist in your area. You can go to the private messaging on this forum, and I can tell you more.
Google DMSO & sciatica
If the regular exercises and mild medication are not doing the trick, consider seeing a pain specialist and getting a nerve ablation.
i had long term serious pain which turned out to be from some mild arthritis setting in where the nerve leaves the spine. Pain pills had to be pretty heavy and it sucked to be on them so i was eventually sent to a pain doctor who did steroid injections at the site. The first two lasted 6 and 12 weeks respectively and the last one was over 2 years ago. Sometimes get some twinges but regular exercise and stretching keeps it all under control.
Hope it's just a transitional thing from twisting, but if it is due to another condition that just popped to the top from the issue, there is a good likelihood of successful treatment for long-term relief.
Hang in there and do your dang exercises with some extra stretching as necessary...
Please see a doctor. Or good chiropractor first.
I’ve had 3 back surgeries for sciatica and have been free from pain since 1992 - I’m 70.
First and most severe case was successfully dealt with by a good chiro whose treatment had me well in 30 days. Pain was so severe I couldn’t walk one step as 10,000 volts would shoot up my leg to spine. He did something I’ve never found any chiro to duplicate, but said he used my tendons & muscles along my spine to push a bulging disc back into place. Like the Chinese finger tube that gets tighter the harder you pull it. All I know is it worked. Right leg.
Years later I ruptured a disc pinching the nerve in my left leg. No chiro could fix it, and none knew of the method used by the first one. Osteopaths couldn’t fix it. Steroid injections couldn’t fix it.
Swore no doc would ever touch me with a knife as I had tennis friend who had 3 back surgeries in a year and was left a cripple in a wheelchair. But I learned from him - never let an orthopedic surgeon cut you when dealing with nerves. Find the best neurosurgeon experienced with sciatica. BTW, I accused my friend of not telling me that sciatica was contagious as I had gotten mine from so much time visiting him in the hospital. ;-)
Eventually I had to have surgery - couldn’t sleep - and you can only go without sleep for so long. I found the best neurosurgeon for sciatica in the area, and was walking without pain a few hours after surgery.
The pain came back 4 years later, again, I tried everything but surgery - with each successive surgery, the liklihood of success drops by 50% they say. Nothing worked. Even an arthroscopic surgery.
Finally I had the first doc do it - again, instant relief - that has lasted 23 years. This time is was scar tissue from the first surgery on one side of the nerve, calcified bone growth on the other side.
A pinched sciatic nerve can have dozens of causes - some purely muscular. Those can be healed with things like stretching that have been mentions.
But when you have a ruptured disc, nothing will fix it but surgery - or a divine healing. I was facing being crippled for life from atrophied muscles if I didn’t have surgery, even if I could have endured the pain.
This is too complex an issue to try to fix yourself. See a chiro first - if that doesn’t work, get thyself to a good back doc and only let a neurosurgeon do the work.
HTH - hope this helps....