Sciatica flare up 3/4 through AT thru-hike. Need advice!

[HankIV]

Way to go. There are times when you have to listen to your body—there are other times where your body has to listen to you.

[Traveler]

Appreciate the follow up post on your condition!

[4eyedbuzzard]

Hi, OP here. Since someone bumped this thread recently, I wanted to thank everyone again for their advice and give an update in case somebody else is dealing with this issue in the future. When I made this post on 9/3, I had ~668 miles left with all of southern Maine and NH ahead of me to get back to NY. My back was in terrible shape. I had sciatica going all the way down to the underside of my foot on the right leg. And it really looked like I wasn't going to finish. I finally DID complete my thru-hike on 12/3 (92 days later @ ~7 miles per day). But it was really tough going. The biggest thing that inflamed my nerves was the awful terrain in Maine and NH. It didnt get much better until I was in Vermont. And I had to consciously just slow way down and accept that I'd be doing terrible mileage the whole way home. There were a few things that helped me a lot.

1) Every morning, I religiously did about 50 minutes of warm up and stretching. Then I hit the main main muscle groups again briefly before bed.
2) Sciatic nerve flossing. Do this very sparingly (like literally 10 reps per day). Its very easy to overdo. But all the other exercises I tried actually made things worse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85OEGNd9DIE
3) Letting weight loss really take place as my hike went on, and not gorging myself every time I went into town.
4) A zero day at every resupply point.

Glad to hear you found something that worked. I watched the video link and noted that they are big on McKenzie method / program. Did you have any positive response from McKenzie exercises? As I suggested earlier they work well for me, and I'd recommend anyone with back pain at least try the methodology to see if it helps.

5) Too much ibuprofin (but I really tried limiting myself to 6 per day)

6 x 200mg's / day? That's about half of what I was taking (3 x 800 mgs / day) while recovering, which is pretty much the maximum dose when prescribed by a doctor. You probably could have taken more provided you didn't have any stomach issues (NSAIDS can cause ulcers/bleeding).

6) And I'm embarrassed to even write this one. But Marijuana. I was in states where it was legal and had nothing to lose. And I was very surprised how well it dulled my pain!

Okay, 'fess up! How many pounds of Oreos and Doritos did you go through? The truth now.

Good luck to any other hikers with bum backs!

Ditto.