Dealing with Sciatica pain

I am new to sciatica ...so please pardon what's been previously addressed.

I am going to PT twice a week and though I still ACHE, we are making progress.
I have begun to wonder about some other treatments to go in concert with the PT. Obviously, I will need to ask my therapist ere starting anything, but I was thinking about
- Traction
- Suspension (holding myself up and allowing my legs to dangle)
- Jacuzzi/spa
- Floatation
- Isolation chamber (complete sensory derivation)

Is anyone doing or getting any of these? Do they help

Thankmew in Advance.

Hello @kaptainkat. It is really great that you are looking to be proactive alongside your PT to find ways to compliment what is being recommended.

You will notice that I have moved your post into an existing discussion on sciatica pain. This may help you to more easily connect with other sciatica pain sufferers like @junebug15 @bernese53 @maryflorida @suerc @bustrbrwn22 to name a few.

In addition to what you've listed, I wonder if you have you every considered or tried pilates?

Hello, I also have sciatica and am looking for ways to ease the discomfort. I appreciate all of the comments and shall contribute more when I have something to offer.

Have you gone to a chiropractor? That helped me when I had a pinched nerve in my lower back! PT is good for the muscles, keep that up but a good chiropractor can move the nerve back in place!

Went to a Chiro regular in my 40s and 50s.

I am following my GPs lead here.

And unless Medicare pays, I an kind of stuck.

But thankmew for the suggestion.

You could ask your primary care physician for a referral to a neuromuscular skeletal specialist

@lmdavis Something to keep in mind that my physical therapist says is that the "bones are dumb and go where the muscles tell them to go." Basically this means that if you do not address the reasons that a muscle has moved something, for example muscular spinal alignment, the muscles tend to go right back where they were. If the body is out of alignment because muscle spasms have shifted the position of some vertebrae, getting the vertebrae back in alignment can take pressure off of something. Chiropractors do this with a quick blunt force. Physical therapists do this with gentle muscle re-education and strengthening, stretching with manual work, or using modalities like neuro-stimulation to ease the spasms.

If you have developed some spinal instability so that your discs are not strong enough to correctly hold the vertebrae in place, you run the risk of spinal cord and nerve damage if there is a blunt force to the vertebrae such as may be done by a chiropractor. Think of the beads on a necklace. Your spinal cord is the string inside, and when you move a bead, you move the spinal cord. If you actually move the spinal cord with one of the vertebrae, the spinal cord can get damaged.

Chiropractors don't actually move nerves, they move bones/muscles that are around them or change the alignment of the vertebrae bones around the spaces where spinal nerves exit the spine between them. Moving a nerve forcibly can damage it. Nerves pass through some very small spaces, so alignment matters. I question the safety of force put on the discs during a chiropractor adjustment. The other way a nerve can "move" is by flossing; for example when you bend your hand up and down while you are stretching your arm and feel the pressure change. That stretches the nerve a little bit as it stays in place. Everything wears as we age, and discs tend to dry out and become stiffer, so they become more prone to injury. If there has been a prior injury like a whiplash small cracks can form in discs, and as a disc dries out with aging, a disc can herniate because of fissures that open up weakening the fibrous outer layer. The inside of the disc is filled with a jelly like material and called the nucleus propolsus. When that squishes out, your disc collapses a bit. Depending on how far that has progressed, you may be headed for spine surgery. It is normal aging for the discs to dry out and discs have to continually do their job of being the suspension cushion and stabilizing mechanism for the spine.

Thankmew, Jennifer.

I don't recall if I'd mentioned that I've a first cousin a year younger than I who started out studying chiropractic and switched to PT where he spent his career.

I went to a Chiro regularly in my 40s and 50s. He would align, and muscle would pull back out.

I am getting benefit from the work my PT is doing on me. I walked 300 get the other day. But the pain still ebbs and flows, between a 6.5 and 8.5 on a scale of 10. Somedays are worse than others, and posture and position are getting to make more of a difference.

OT - My PT is Jessica, and my psychiatrist is Jasmine! Never had so many 'J's around!

That is 300 FEET!

When I started PT I could barely walk the 25-30' to the end of the driveway without my hips feeling as if they would fall apart.

I’ve had two S1 injections and one sacral nerve block and no relief. This has been going on since July and the pain is horrible. I’m going to PT. Nothing helps. Any ideas?