Success Story: 36M, from immobile to almost fully recovered in four months

Hey everyone, I wanted to post my success story for everyone. I know how debilitating sciatica can be, how hopeless it can feel at times when the days, weeks, months, and even years pass by without much improvement. I do believe there is light at the end of the tunnel for us all, and hope my experience will be useful to this community.

My sciatica pain story:

  • A little pain: About eight months ago, I started to get pain in my groin on the left side. It would usually flare up after long stints of sitting for work or after exercise, especially repetitious asymmetric movements like a golf swing. It was annoying and concerning, but easy enough for me to dismiss and go about my life as normal
  • A lot of pain: About five months ago, it started to get bad. Sitting was starting to become really uncomfortable and I would dread drives that were longer than 20 minutes. I started to realize this was something that was not going to go away on its own and could even get worse
  • Fear setting in: About four months ago, I had work travel upcoming and started to worry about my ability to sit on a flight for multiple hours. I decided to see a chiropractor. The chiropractor did some deep tissue massage, showed me some PT, and did an adjustment. She struggled to adjust me and had to take multiple attempts to get a single pop, lifting and dropping me 3-4 times. That said, I had immediate relief. I couldn't believe it, I was thrilled.
  • It gets bad bad: Two days after the adjustment, I woke up and could barely even stand up out of bed. Pain was shooting down the entire back of my leg. I was in so much pain I had zero appetite. I could go an entire day eating 500 calories, and even those calories were forced. When I did force myself to eat, I had to stand up and bring the plate up to my face as I couldn't tilt my head forward without trigger shooting sciatica pain
  • The months pass by: My day to day life was comprised of laying down 18+ hours a day, hobbling around the block to get some steps in, DoorDashing food, working from a yoga mat with my laptop settled on my chest. I spent every Saturday and Sunday just laying at my pool. Life felt like it was just passing me by. "How's your back doing?" was something I had to hear 10 times a day, it was the first thing people thought of when we interacted
  • Learning and experimenting: I became obsessive with solving the problem. Watching hours and hours of Youtube content, trying different exercises, breathing techniques, sleeping positions. I saw the aforementioned chiro a couple more times, saw an acupuncturist three times, and finally got a PCP (who refused to send me for an MRI or prescribe me PT without me first jumping through hoops). The healthcare system as a whole felt pretty useless to me, so I continued the path of learning as much as I could and applying it to see how I responded
  • Sticking to the plan: I went from 1k steps a day, to 3k, to 7k, to 10k. Occasionally I'd make a point of getting up to 14k steps a day. Sometimes it was easy, sometimes I had to push myself a bit (careful to not overdo it). It helped for sure, but there were no incredible improvements for me. Nevertheless, it felt good have goals set, to be tracking myself with data, and to feel like I was actually a member of society. I kept doing core exercises (Big 3 and the like), making sure I maintained basic muscle mass and didn't waste away
  • What worked for me:
    • Walking. As just mentioned, walking was helpful. Discs are largely avascular and benefit from movement for nourishment. Walking gives some basic muscular resistance. It set the tone for being disciplined in other areas
    • Avoiding lumbar flexion like the plague. Of all the exercises and stretches, the ones that reliably set me back involved lumbar flexion. Even a simple cat-cow movement would trigger pain (during the "cat" portion). Yet every week or so I'd give it another shot and get the same painful results. Conversely, doing some proper hip hinges to stretch the posterior chain helped immensely
    • Supporting lordosis. I really think this is what helped the most. I found a Youtube video that suggested rolling up a towel and laying with it under the lumbar spine to reinforce lordosis. I gave it a try, laying for 30-40 minutes with the towel underneath me. It was uncomfortable but not painful at first, and the towel slowly sunk into my lumbar spine and it started feeling good. After the first session I was able to go on a 40 min walk with almost zero pain. I started to bring the towel with me everywhere. I drove with it, I sat at work with it, I sat at home with it. I spent upwards of an hour a day laying on it during the day, and often slept on it too. Within 1-2 weeks I went from from struggling to walk to almost zero pain

Conclusion: there will forever be a time of my life defined by sciatica. I feel for everyone in this community dealing with this. Focusing on the basics and correcting the curvature of the spine worked for me. Obviously I can't say it will work for everyone, but if you haven't invested in it, it might be worth giving a shot.

Wishing you all the best.