After a quick search of the forum, this seems to be something which a lot of people suffer from at one point or another so I thought I'd start a thread so there's a central source of information and hopefully some ideas on what might help either avoid it, reduce the pain temporarily or help cure it for some.
Last week, a few hours after helping a friend cut up some trees and split his pile of unsplitable bits I headed off for a dog walk and suddenly noticed that @BAMBAMODA had snuck up behind me and stuck a huge great knife in my right buttock.
I hobbled on for a few km's wishing it wasn't wet and thinking maybe a road walk would have been a better idea than up and down deer tracks.
I hoped sleep would fix it, but it didn't. The next day was somehow worse and I started to wonder if it wasn't actually nerve related rather than a muscular problem. The next day I had to do some work/get some firewood. So cut up and loaded a van load of old chestnut beams. My mate was most entertained and said I looked like forest gump after he'd been shot in the bum an suggested sciatica. Saw the farmer later who also thought sciatica and suggested beer and then rest. He helped with the first part, but rest after didn't help.
Internet time ..
Lots of information as you'd expect and amazingly some of the best bits came from here !
This post from Indigo for instance :
This part was interesting :
If any of the small muscles that hold the hip joint capsule together, become too long when fully relaxed, it can cause the sciatic nerve to get pinched resulting in sudden pain or sudden leg movement (a muscle reflex action). You instantly wake up and have no idea why. -- You might occasionally experience such sudden leg movement as you relax while drifting off to sleep. That would be a tell tail warning sign that you are susceptible to sciatic nerve pain (Sciatica) and/or restless legs.
For the last year I've had the weird jerky random leg .... so I guess I've had symptoms longer than I realised.
So anyway .. fixing it .. or alleviating .
NSAIDS (Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory) should help. I try to avoid them and have none in stock, so it wasn't an option.
Ice pack ! Wrapped in a clean towel - stuffed against buttock (or leg if that's where you have pain) for 15 minutes. Suggestions vary for how often you can do this, but once an hour seems ok. My buttock is still there.
I then moved onto stretching. I'm guessing what will work will depend on each persons body and where exactly the nerve is trapped.
For me in the end I found these to work :
Lying on the floor flat for 15 minutes to begin. Very boring but it gets everything relaxing.
The next stretch hurts like hell, but seems effective - except I couldn't move enough to do it.
You sit up (carefully) then take one foot and cross it over the opposite knee. Then slowly move your chest to your legs and hold the position for 15-30 seconds. Then do the same with the other leg. Start with the leg which doesn't hurt. For my pain side, it took me about 3 minutes to get my foot to my knee and after repeated very slow movements, stop, rest, try again - after about another 5 minutes my chest was several miles away from my legs - but you could feel it stretching everywhere.
As mentioned, I couldn't actually move enough at the start to do this stretch so had to slowly work on being able to lift my legs .
So I had to do this, commencing just with lifting the legs (This is generally probably a bad idea as it can/will put strain on your lower back which is the last thing you want to do, but it was the only thing which freed my legs up) - I'll let Camille show you rather than me explain :
Moving on from there I noticed that sitting aggravated it. So wondered about the "kneeling" chairs. These seem to be a bit of a disaster so I went for the simple option of trying kneeling at the desk/table. Much better !! So researched that. It seems the best thing to do is kneel with one leg, but put the other leg forwards so you support yourself on your foot with one leg and the knee with the other. Then alternate between legs. This helps core strength and stops you (me
) slouching when sitting. You can then add in mini squats to make life more interesting.
Those bits seems to have got me fairly mobile again in a couple of days and that's where I am now. Plan to take it easy this week when possible to give any inflamed areas time to heal. My butttt still hurts, so it's not gone completely, but at least I can walk again and can go over electric fences rather than having to crawl under them
Last week, a few hours after helping a friend cut up some trees and split his pile of unsplitable bits I headed off for a dog walk and suddenly noticed that @BAMBAMODA had snuck up behind me and stuck a huge great knife in my right buttock.
I hobbled on for a few km's wishing it wasn't wet and thinking maybe a road walk would have been a better idea than up and down deer tracks.
I hoped sleep would fix it, but it didn't. The next day was somehow worse and I started to wonder if it wasn't actually nerve related rather than a muscular problem. The next day I had to do some work/get some firewood. So cut up and loaded a van load of old chestnut beams. My mate was most entertained and said I looked like forest gump after he'd been shot in the bum an suggested sciatica. Saw the farmer later who also thought sciatica and suggested beer and then rest. He helped with the first part, but rest after didn't help.
Internet time ..
Lots of information as you'd expect and amazingly some of the best bits came from here !
This post from Indigo for instance :
This part was interesting :
If any of the small muscles that hold the hip joint capsule together, become too long when fully relaxed, it can cause the sciatic nerve to get pinched resulting in sudden pain or sudden leg movement (a muscle reflex action). You instantly wake up and have no idea why. -- You might occasionally experience such sudden leg movement as you relax while drifting off to sleep. That would be a tell tail warning sign that you are susceptible to sciatic nerve pain (Sciatica) and/or restless legs.
For the last year I've had the weird jerky random leg .... so I guess I've had symptoms longer than I realised.
So anyway .. fixing it .. or alleviating .
NSAIDS (Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory) should help. I try to avoid them and have none in stock, so it wasn't an option.
Ice pack ! Wrapped in a clean towel - stuffed against buttock (or leg if that's where you have pain) for 15 minutes. Suggestions vary for how often you can do this, but once an hour seems ok. My buttock is still there.
I then moved onto stretching. I'm guessing what will work will depend on each persons body and where exactly the nerve is trapped.
For me in the end I found these to work :
Lying on the floor flat for 15 minutes to begin. Very boring but it gets everything relaxing.
The next stretch hurts like hell, but seems effective - except I couldn't move enough to do it.
You sit up (carefully) then take one foot and cross it over the opposite knee. Then slowly move your chest to your legs and hold the position for 15-30 seconds. Then do the same with the other leg. Start with the leg which doesn't hurt. For my pain side, it took me about 3 minutes to get my foot to my knee and after repeated very slow movements, stop, rest, try again - after about another 5 minutes my chest was several miles away from my legs - but you could feel it stretching everywhere.
As mentioned, I couldn't actually move enough at the start to do this stretch so had to slowly work on being able to lift my legs .
So I had to do this, commencing just with lifting the legs (This is generally probably a bad idea as it can/will put strain on your lower back which is the last thing you want to do, but it was the only thing which freed my legs up) - I'll let Camille show you rather than me explain :
Moving on from there I noticed that sitting aggravated it. So wondered about the "kneeling" chairs. These seem to be a bit of a disaster so I went for the simple option of trying kneeling at the desk/table. Much better !! So researched that. It seems the best thing to do is kneel with one leg, but put the other leg forwards so you support yourself on your foot with one leg and the knee with the other. Then alternate between legs. This helps core strength and stops you (me
) slouching when sitting. You can then add in mini squats to make life more interesting.Those bits seems to have got me fairly mobile again in a couple of days and that's where I am now. Plan to take it easy this week when possible to give any inflamed areas time to heal. My butttt still hurts, so it's not gone completely, but at least I can walk again and can go over electric fences rather than having to crawl under them
Last edited:
