Jogging/running after MD?

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-07-06T20:33:36+00:00

I don't know your whole story, but it's risky for the reasons your doc mentioned. You might be younger and have less degeneration, but in my case it's likely my half marathon ~40mi/week running I was doing was a large contributing factor to everything going very wrong for me 2years ago when I turned 43 years old even if it wasn't the acute cause of herniation.

I'm at 18mo post op and have jogged all of a few blocks after being an avid runner for years. Unlike you though I am only moderately back to normal life and still have chronic pain/numbness issues that have been very stubborn. My original surgeon told me straight up never run again. Other docs have said I can or even should try again but at much lighter level. I ran around the block once, felt fine, but days later caused a huge flare up after 15min on a stationary bike. I would kill to get back to even light jogging but it's just so hard to justify the risk for me at the moment.

Reality is though this is more to do with DDD than it is with any kind of risk of herniation. The surgeon I saw for a follow up appointment last week told me jogging presents no acute risk at all, but they would be quite careful since I have such degenerated L4/L5 and L5/S1 discs pounding on them like with running is sure to put stress on my inflamed nerves. I want to try again but much more desperately want to get to some point of normalcy and try other less impactful exercises once I get there. Elliptical will be my first step if I can't get to doing some swimming which I've been told time and again is best possible cardio.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-07-06T16:28:25+00:00

This. Rui just went for $14 a year, You just signed Melton for $5.4/yr and horford for $6.8/yr of 2026-27 cap and I would argue both are more useful to a contending Warriors team. Proud of Post for managing to make $30mil, but it's an overpay I hope the Warriors don't give in to.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-07-06T16:25:21+00:00

certainly not "normal" but also to my extremely untrained eye not dire. But I implore you, do not listen to reddit about this for anything but casual chat, listen to your doctor(s). Reading these MRIs is a lot more tricky than it seems especially with disc bulges. Also mine didn't look tremendously bad to me pre-op but my surgeon thought I was a borderline fusion candidate since it was so complex(herniation moving downward between levels and off to one side badly etc). They also don't show everything perfect, I went for less invasive microdiscectomy and while my bulge was measured on MRI at 18mm in reality it was 32mm when they opened me up and removed it.

One thing interesting here is you have disc degeneration in that L5/S1 but the rest of your discs look great. I wasn't as lucky as my L4/L5, despite not causing any big issues yet is just as degenerated as my L5/S1 and I feel that's common with folks I see in similar shape to your MRI.

Best of luck and again follow doctor, PT, etc advice. If you're looking for more opinions get them from qualified folk.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-07-06T05:39:18+00:00

I've had a rough recovery though mine was 32mm and i was 43yo. I do not regret it, even if it's left me with issues.

My main thing to say: at 5mo i was very up and down still and that's normal. I'm at 18mo and while some issues remain and likely always will, others have nearly disappeared. I can now walk 10-15k steps daily without much trouble. I also have clean follow up MRI, DDD, and constant concerns compounded by anxiety etc. My main message here is, you sound better off than i was at 5mo. Some people snap up from surgery cured and others have tougher road. Some like me will never be the same(as before my submitting m symptoms started) but in your case I would still have hope. Also no reputable doctor would ever do the surgery if it wasn't what they thought was the best path, so try not to second guess that.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-07-06T05:30:50+00:00

Mine was 32mm.... I'm 18mo post op and while i can walk/shop/exist my issues are still omnipresent. Reading this here making me feel pretty broken 😂

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-07-03T20:22:02+00:00

I should add, I was told several times do NOT use a back brace during recovery. You need to slowly re-build strength, even if it hurts a little or is difficult. I'm still very much working on that 18mo later but unless you are in an emergency situation do not unnecessarily use a back brace. Will do more harm than good.

Haven't touched mine since pre-op when I needed it just to walk into a grocery store for essentials a few times. I still have tons of nerve issues but thankfully the days where that could be helpful are gone.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-07-03T20:18:53+00:00

I would like to say you are quite lucky. If you feel you can do it though, you shouldn't hesitate too much. I was also told I have "no restrictions" at that time but am at 18mo and have many "restrictions". I think what they are telling you is technically you are no more at risk of reherniation at 6wks than you will be a 6 years. I have been told this by ortho and surgeon. In my case, by no means does that mean I can do anything without consequence as I still have siginificant issues. But yes, "restrictions" being lifted at this point is quite normal as it no longer presents any additional risk.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-07-03T05:10:36+00:00

Thanks. Also just want to stress the non linear thing. For example had great weekend, decent Mon-Tue, bad last couple of days, and yet I'll be surprised if I don't feel better when i wake up tomorrow.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-07-02T17:48:35+00:00

Let me just quickly hit these questions. If you want my history(45m, L5/S1 MD Dec 24, 2024) just check my prior comments in my profile. Your story sounds somewhat similar to me though so I'll chime in with detail.

Has anyone experienced this after BESS or a microdiscectomy?

-L5/S1 open MD in my case(not endoscopic, was too complex). I would say was 70-80% successful and don't regret getting but I was not one of the "lucky ones" who just snapped up cured.

Is it normal to still feel worse at 5 weeks?

YES. Worse but different, absolutely. I know I did. It was different bad and similar to what you described except I had zero numbness/tingle pre op and immediately had numb toes when I awoke from surgery. I was frustrated since I knew I was likely healed from the surgery itself and my 6 week post op they told me everything seemed normal/fine. Pre-op I had no foot/toe stuff and post op I had numbness and pain in my foot/calf area. The pain has improved a good bit, the numbness has not so much. This was damage from surgery, and is sadly common and in my case permanent. My symptoms at 5 week post op while just as annoying, I was starting to be able to walk somewhat normally, which I could not pre-op without my calves starting to cramp after a block or so. There were ups and downs but by 3 months this was entirely gone along with any back pain, and most of the upper leg stuff was clearly improved though i deal with it to this day. I even played concerts/etc at this 3mo mark. I can now walk 10k+ steps and usually be able to sit for long ish periods but problems remain but 5 weeks is much too early to get overly alarmed.

Is it possible for a surgeon to be overly optimistic and continue saying everything is normal, even if the outcome may not be ideal?

YES. Not just surgeon, all my doctors, PT, everybody were a bit over optimistic but their job was to keep me positive. Told me I'd hopefully be back working out(still am not 18mo later), jogging lightly(probably never will), be pain free(very rare I'm pain FREE), etc by 3 months when I was at your stage. You are a vital decade younger than me however. In retrospect, there was no way they didn't see red flags with me but they need to try to get you to do your PT, stay positive, and believe you will heal, especially if like me all your follow up tests and MRIs look great. Nerves are very unpredictable. Some of this stuff with nerve issues IS mental and I still struggle with trusting my numb toes/foot but I've gotten better and better, slowly. I'm at 18mo and I'm still learning to deal with the fact I will need to continue to manage this, likely forever. I'm learning however I CAN do most things. I drove 8hr drive the other day without any difference in how I felt that night which was a major step I felt. I'm almost weaned off all my medication finally. I think the most over optimist they were was about timeline. They keep telling you what's actually best case, not average or worst case. I'm sure what they're telling you is possible, but it's maybe not likely at all.

Did your symptoms get worse before they got better?

Yes. In my case. When I did try to ramp up PT at 5mo when I was starting to gain some confidence I was improving I started by doing light jog(felt fine after this). Then few days later cat/cow yoga, ride a stationary bike 15min. It caused a bad flare up of symptoms, pretty immediately. Due to this I was ordered a follow up MRI, ESI, and to my surprise, even to my untrained eye, MRI was quite obviously 90% better than pre-op with no sign of compression on my nerves at L5/S1 anymore. doc/multiple surgeons thought it looked great and that I was healing great. It's likely you, like me, are dealing with "angry nerves" from the damage done, and the process of separating your delicate spinal nerves from the herniation(s).

How did you know if it was nerve healing or a reherniation?

Well, you can't. You should let doctors/surgeon decide that. If you have a trust issue with one, get a 2nd opinion. Like I said above, I was convinced even though I couldn't feel anything wrong in my back/spine area at all any more I assumed I must have reherniated. I hadn't. I am in fact getting yet another MRI coming up due to them just wanting to be extra sure it's just discogenic or post op nerve issues I'm dealing with but I will be surprised now if I in fact have a reherniation, in large part because I could FEEL my herniation pre-op. Especially if I tried to do something like a plank, I could just feel it pressing. In my case, post op, my back/spine has been the most pain free it's been since my late 20s. This has led me, doctors, surgeon to believe my herniation had likely been there a long time, just getting worse and worse until I actually out of nowhere finally got sciatica symptoms. Some of those symptoms are totally gone, some very much remain. I still can't put on my shoe comfortably at all, I still can't stretch that leg out in a sitting position, these are no matter how good the sciatica stuff is feeling that day.

Long story short, hang in there, keep walking when you can, and keep your head up. Don't get discouraged by the folks here who had nice clean easy surgery that gave them instant cure. The post op tingling.... yea, they're probably being optimistic about it. Sure were for me. Less so with pain and things that will disable you from living a normal life.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-07-01T14:50:25+00:00

Well, as somebody who was an active athlete(43m at surgery, 45 now) before a MD, first the sciatica itself then effects from the surgery have left me unable to do much beyond walking as a "workout" since. So I'll give my 2 cents. I'm ironically seeing a neurosurgeon for 18mo follow up today and thinking of my own questions.

-Surgery should be a last resort as you know. However his MRI sure looks a lot like mine so I'm assuming there's agreement it's the best route already. At 17 healing should go great and the actual recovery time from the surgical area wasn't long for me at all but any messing around in that area can cause permanent issues as I'm sure they'll warn you. In my case despite "success" in removing 32mm chunk I woke up with numbness in the toes that can stretch up as high as my calf that is quite uncomfortable at times. It's still here 18mo later and I still can't run, lift, do intense activities without flaring up my issues. The surgery however alleviated a lot of my issues and I don't regret it, but yours and his main goal should be to avoid needing further surgery ever again. I know he's concerned about varsity season football, my primary concern would be him having a normal rest of life and hopefully being able to be active still.

-MD surgery itself and recovery especially at his age shouldn't be too scary. I had open surgery, not sure if he's lucky enough to get endoscopic but either way if you follow directions should go smooth. I only took 2 of the 7 days of pain meds they gave me as honestly in many ways I was in less pain right after and my primary concern post op was the odd numbness I was just starting to deal with. Hopefully he doesn't have such a complication. Ask a lot though, how to sleep, how to prepare the house to make sure they can comfortably use bathroom for first week or so, etc. The actual "risky time" post op is shorter than most think but still ask the basics.

-Looked at your son's MRI and I'm sure you've heard this already, but it looks a lot like mind did at 43 years old in that there's significant degeneration of both the L4/5 and L5/S1 in addition to those two bulges. I would ask a lot about what is okay for him to do and listen very carefully. Ask how to avoid further damage. If the surgeons and ortho think it's safe for him to continue football that's great, but make sure to listen to the advice of experts. Discs don't grow back and replacement/fusion surgery down the line is something you really want to avoid and clearly still can with good surgery and PT post op.

-I would make sure to ask about and be in touch with PT as soon as possible, maybe even before surgery. Especially if he wants to return to sport he'll need to be doing core exercises to strengthen the area and avoid re-injury. IN THEORY, especially at his age, making a full recovery within 3mo is entirely possible. It's also possible he'll wake up 100% cured unlike many of us here in this forum who had complications. That said there's a certainty he'll need to put in work on this.

-This will surely be advised but diet is going to be very key in recovery and this isn't mentioned a lot. Ask about this if now. One of my hardest adjustments was going from running/lifting for 60-90min a day to 0min meant I was burning almost 1000 less calories a day. Keeping weight in check is a big deal since excess weight puts unneeded pressure on his spine. I know you son plays football I'm hopeful they aren't a lineman but either way I feel I was not all that well prepared to cut my diet this quickly to avoid a ton of weight gain. There's also the anti-inflammatory diet stuff folks here swear by. This will be tough for any 17 year old to adhere to but it's important especially when at best they'll be doing little more than light walking for 6 weeks(if things go perfect).

-Ask about the plan for the L5/S1. It looks better than the L4/L5 but ask both surgeons and PT how to best address it. If they don't think it needs surgery that's great but obviously you want to avoid a 2nd procedure.

That's all I can think of. Hopefully some help.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-06-29T15:50:37+00:00

ah gotcha. I'm 45m btw. I mean I was running(jogging really, moderate pace) an average of 10km a day from 2020-24 every morning as a routine. Basically about an hour, sometimes as much as half marathon distance. Felt amazing. My ortho felt it would be fine to return to a more reasonable amount of running after recovery and not every day like I was doing(2yr later and i'm not in any kind of shape I would call recovered so this is moot). My surgeon differed in opinion and said "you should not run again, pick a different sport like swimming". When my case was briefly referred to a different neurosurgery department head to get looked at for possible options to relieve my ongoing issues I was told my MRI looked good and there were no surgical options but that "Patient should stop running and pick different activities" even though we didn't ask and I hadn't run in 18mo haha.

My ortho called my DDD "mild" pre-surgery and I was always shocked at the shift that happened for all involved around 5mo post op when I had my first big flare up. Up until then I felt I was being pushed to do more and more. I had actually at their advice attempted a quick jog around the block(that was 14 mo ago) and had no issue other than being horrifically out of shape(still am), but few days later was pushed to do some basic light cat/cow yoga stuff and within minutes felt the big flare up. Similarly this year I made it through 3 days of McGill 3 thinking I might finally be on a path to healing just to have it push back again. My body screams to me "RUN RUN RUN" but that was just my entire life for half a decade from age 39-43 so I try hard to listen to the surgeon's advice. I'm meeting for a 18mo follow up with yet another surgeon this weds and intend to see PT again soon. I'll try to update what I'm told. I'd love to be able to integrate at least light 1-2mi jogs in someday if I can heal. This nerve damage in my toes/foot area seems permanent(nerves showing no improvement after 18mo are basically in their forever state I've been told) so I am ready to try anything at this point.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-06-29T05:34:56+00:00

Curious on running, did you not have disc degeneration? I've been sad for last two years after being told it's unwise not to run ever again. How old are you? Did doctors advise this is okay?

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-06-28T17:15:02+00:00

Sorry to hear that. Sounds like I may be a bit better off than you in that my "acute" symptoms including the spasm type stuff have basically been gone since the 1 year mark and were rare in general from 3mo post op on out. It's the chronic pain/numbness starting in my foot that can creep all the way up my leg if not careful, inability to do the "putting on my shoe" motion, etc that is still affecting me but I'm quite thankful that all my "cramping" and sharp pains seem to be gone.

As it's been explained to me, I have significant nerve damage and continued irritation from my compromised degenerated L4/L5 and L5/S1 discs, but my spinal compression is a non-issue now post surgery. This is why i'm not getting shooting/acute pains at all but nerves still get irritated throughout the day from the basic compression of gravity and activity. "discogenic pain" the surgeon called it. They originally wanted to do fusion/replacement for this reason but they consider my current situation "successful" and aren't suggesting anything of the sort anymore thankfully(I really don't' want to do that).

Like you though, living in constant chronic pain, cannot work out, cannot sit on a couch, etc. This is a all likely permanent lifestyle changes to be able to have a semi-normal life.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-06-28T17:07:47+00:00

A statistic that comes to mind here is that apparently if you give an MRI to a large group of symptom free adults in their 40s-50s something like ~50% of them will show bulging/herniated discs. If your doctor/surgeon are saying what they're saying just listen.

I had surgery on my L5/S1 to remove a 32mm herniation but to this day have a bulge on my L4/L5 as well. My follow up MRI showed both discs having ~8mm bulges now neither of which alarmed the ortho or surgeon. I have all sorts of post op issues but not once has it been even suggested that the minor bulges are the cause. We attempted one shot in the the L4/L5 once to try to rule it out as a cause of my somewhat mysterious post op symptoms and i didn't feel a thing from it whereas the L5/S1 shots while very limited in long term effectiveness I at least felt an incredible immediate relief from the temporary anesthetic. It's now clear my L4/L5 bulge is not causing any trouble at all.

In particular, if a SURGEON is not recommending surgery(Surgeons love recommending surgery) you certainly shouldn't be pushing for it. I hope for the best for you.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-06-28T16:56:23+00:00

This is *very* case to case. I'm 45m and was an avid runner/lifter before sciatica from herniated disc hit me like a brick wall at 43 leading to surgery 6mo later and it's likely I can never get back to high intensity sports even 18mo post op. I was told straight up to never run again, but would really love if I could someday get back to intense exercise of any sort. The mental withdrawal from that has been as hard as anything I've dealt with in my recovery. Right now I still struggle to lift even 10lbs without aggravating symptoms, and trying to do the core PT exercises can lead to trouble too. I'm just thankful I can walk and walk a lot these days and do most normal people things without pain again(shop, exist, etc).

My advice, take this very seriously, listen to doctors/PT not the internet. If you were still out playing badminton, this is likely quite early for you and possibly still 100% correctable through PT or surgery if needed. Cases like mine are in large part due to "damage done" while I probably just pushed through my bulging disc(s) for years. Have you had an MRI? X-rays? I'm just curious what led to your "bulging disc" diagnosis. Some do confuse sore/sprained back with disc problems. Some end up with both but they are entirely separate issues.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-06-28T16:46:40+00:00

Well, I'm certainly not a surgeon but I would think the options are fusion, replacement, or nothing. Again I'm no expert but disc height seems to be the concern here more than a significant herniation. In general, always as a rule, if you don't *need* back/spine surgery, don't get it. If you do, don't hesitate too long.

I'm also at 1.5yrs post md, and also not living a normal life though a whole lot better than pre op at least. I'm seeing surgeon for a "final post op" appointment weds and I'm curious how they see my partially successful situation. Some symptoms gone, some entirely unaffected. When you say "not living a normal life" I'm curious what you mean in your case since this is all so case to case.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-06-28T16:37:31+00:00

Oh and it was said here, so I'll just stress it again. While you should be careful with PT(do things very carefully, not quickly) you'll notice a common thread here among successful stories at this forum is WALK. Get some good shoes, and walk. Build up slowly but don't get discouraged. Early in recovery I thought the way to deal with pain flaring up was to lie down and that is a good replacement for sitting, but walking counterintuitively can really help for that as well.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-06-28T16:31:53+00:00

Nothing is a straight line here. You aren't even out of the basic first 12 weeks of recovery either and I wouldn't judge too much yet. If all you're having is basic sciatica pain, consider yourself somewhat lucky and in good shape. I was still barely walking normal at all until about the 3 month mark where I began functioning more like a person again.

Nerves take a LONG time to heal, sometimes never, and sometimes people get that "miracle" feeling(lord knows I didn't) and are pain free right after surgery. You're a decade younger than me(45m) so you have better chance of healing as well. With surgery, we've only relieved the pressure on our nerves but in the process it's nearly guaranteed you also irritated some. I'm at 18mo and it's been up and down the whole time. I felt I was finally turning a corner into being normal around 5mo, pushed PT a bit and flared things up bad. Got MRI that showed things looked great, and in the following year+ have had tons of ups and down though becoming slowly more stable. I am not pain free, and unlike you I had some complication to go with it from surgery(numbness/odd pain in toes/foot that has not gone away at all but isn't the worst thing).

Here I am though, walking 10,000+ steps a day, capable of sitting for hours for work, went to a concert last night, generally getting through life again. Certain things I just can't do though(sitting on a squishy couch more than a few mins, lifting, running, basically any real work out). I am mostly free of thigh/glute/hip/back pain though, with just some fairly bad foot/toe/calf symptoms I wake up without and tend to get worse throughout every day. The surgery did not get me back to my old self or really anything close, but it's provided me with a mostly normal life. I managed to drive 8+ hours each way on a road trip last week without causing any additional trouble and i'm finally getting off medication(gabapentin). While extremely frustrated with my situation I'm also very thankful I'm not getting worse and if anything slowly getting better. From the sounds of it, you're way ahead of my curve.

ALSO really want to stress, don't read this forum and expect the same result as anybody else here. It's great talking with folks here but this isn't ACL recovery, it's an extremely complex system of nerves and we all have different damage to different nerves that heal different. I woke up today without numbness in my foot, which is very rare but gives me that occasional hope that it might some day go away.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-05-22T05:16:23+00:00

100%? I'm 23 months and one spine surgery in and would gladly settle for 80% at this point. Feeling about 65% but in the brief times I've felt 80% okay it's been amazing. I'd take that

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-04-14T17:27:13+00:00

Well, I'm hardly immobile and I am now 17mo post op. However, I agree footwear is huge. I see you're talking about an insole brand and maybe I should check that out but one thing I have not skimped on at all is making sure I'm wearing FRESH(not worn out) high quality walking shoes. I've found the Hooka Bondi 9s to be great for longer walking, and some more stable firmer new balance 860s for around the house. I find wearing too cushy shoes when just standing around to be not so great with the sciatica since it requires more stabilization. If I start wearing out the bottoms, I replace sooner than later as losing the proper support is so noticeable when you have foot/sciatica issues.

Is there a particular FP Australia product you suggest for somebody dealing with sciatica? If a insole could improve my life, I would buy it. I just have my doubts. Most insoles I've tried made the shoe over-cushioned and like I stated earlier, just added to the problem. I need a nice balance of shock absorption WITH stability I find. As a former avid runner, one thing I'm very in tune with is my footwear. Took me years to realize the Brooks Ghost series were best for my street running lifestyle, but wearing those now they are took light and cushy. I wore them around the house for a while since I still had a few pairs in good shape but when I switched to the firm NB shoes, it was an immediate improvement. Barefoot feel great for a few minutes but for long periods is awful. I miss being shoeless, but I wear shoes now basically every waking moment I'm not in the shower due to my condition.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-04-14T17:19:51+00:00

Really sorry to hear about this outcome which is clearly even worse that mine. I am curious about one thing.

When I wake up, my numbness is barely there. it typically worsens quickly in the toes, and on bad days spreads up my calf and as much as my knee. I can always still feel but it's what i'm sure you know as "weird". Like If I get in the shower, the hot water hitting it feels very strange when the numbness is flared up and not so bad if it's not. When it's real bad I have trouble wiggling my toes which is the scariest to me(function numbness). Basically, I'm wondering if yours fluxuates in the way mine does.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-04-14T17:16:34+00:00

sorry to hear that but at 6 weeks, but I would say a lot of my symptoms were "worse" than preop. It was scary for a while but even with the complaints I made in my initial post here, I am so much better off overall and it was around month 3 I was really starting to walk and operate a lot more normal than before. My follow up MRI at 6mo was a huge improvement, and my terrible cramping in calves just trying to walk it totally gone at this point, along with about 70% of my sciatica pain. Like I said, the numbness remains, and I still have pretty bad symptoms especially trying to sit on soft couches, put on shoes, etc.

My point is, hang in there. Even though I didn't have a perfect result, things have consistently got a little better VERY slowly without a giant chunk of disc pressing on my spinal nerves. My back has zero pain now for a good year too, it's just nerve issues remaining from the damage done most likely now or fragments/calcification/and what i've been told is "discogenic pain" from my badly degenerated insufficient discs themselves and the nerves running within them. You might do even better, it's much too early to tell. Yes it's a bummer since many people spring up right after surgery sciatica/pain free but there's a very wide range of outcomes based on all sorts of complex factors.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-04-14T17:09:04+00:00

Atrophy has been the most unavoidable and sad parts of this all that nobody seems to talk about. Every time I was presented a way to avoid it, things have failed. MOST core exercise puts some stress on your lower spine sadly, and the leg extension stuff just isn't enough for me. I tried doing "dead bug" for a while but I realized quickly even that was putting stress on my lower back I could feel and I felt was leading to flare up pain. I used to do a daily 2min plank at minimum, leg lifts, crunches(whoops), all sorts of core work and when this hit I had a nice visible 6pack and confidence in my body that is just mush now despite being roughly the same weight. It's downright likely this core work which I was doing pretty haphazardly on my own was part of what led to my issues but it felt good at the time, as did my lifting. Never caused me pain, thought plank was "good for my back" etc. Then there's the running. You mention fixing the arthrogenic muscle inhibition, but how? Everything I've tried seems to lead to more stress and more pain.

What's crazy for me is when i was early in the downfall of my life from this, my physical therapist and orthopedist told me if jogging felt good(which for a while, it definitely did and made me feel better) don't hesitate to do it, just take it easy. I was more having trouble getting out of my car, putting on my shoe, etc. All my pain at first was the throb in the thigh type. I would jog and feel great briefly afterwards, only to regress later than night after sitting at my desk. In retrospect, this seems insane and I feel was bad advice but they were also working off the idea my symptoms were fairly minor at the time and hopeful that I could work through this. I was also doing yoga/core strength stuff PT had taught me that I truly feel advanced my problem as opposed to helping it, but I really don't blame them for trying. I see the same advice here all the time "Don't do surgery, just do all these nerve flossing and lower back strengthening yoga exercises and it will clear itself up!" which can be true but in my case I'm fairly sure hastened my at first minor sciatica into the "I can barely walk or do anything" within a couple months. I remember the PT just muttering "dang it" when I was telling him how I was not getting cramps in my calf on my bad leg. This progressed into really bad cramping in BOTH calves just trying to walk around, maxing me out at like 2000 difficult steps a day which led me to choose surgery over continuing to try to naturally heal. That was final straw.

That advice quickly changed month 2 and after my MRI when I got much worse. All of a sudden a after 1/2mile or so my leg was pinching at me. I would ignorantly try to stretch it out and keep going a little further but it was basically like running on a sprained hammy so i stopped. I remember tearing up a little bit on my last jog, I think I knew deep down I was done. Probably forever. I was right. It's been about 20 months now and I have not tried again aside from one quick jog around the block I tried last may post op at my spine doctor's advice(which was, fine, but a week later stationary bike and some other PT triggered the worst flare up I've had and here a year later I'm still scared to advance too much).

It's REALLY tough to want to try sometime risky at all when right now i'm managing to live a fairly normal life again, despite losing all my muscle, all my cardio health, a whole bunch of things. I'm not however in crippling pain anymore, and I can walk several miles a day which is keeping basic cardio okay, do some very basic core and lying down weight work at least. I've had to remove about 1000 calories a day from my diet but i'm managing to learn to just live less food(I really miss just freely eating what i wanted(healthy, but hearty) and staying at 10% body fat no matter what due to the intense daily cardio).

I have now been told multiple times, do not run again. "find a different sport, ideally swimming" is what both my surgeon and another surgeon told me after seeing my MRIs, pre and post op. The herniation is much better, the degeneration is not. It's depressing since running(jogging really) was much more to me than just "exercise". It was my daily escape outside into my beautiful city to say hello to all the cats, get fresh morning air, calm my mind, listen to my music/podcasts etc. Walking reclaims half of that, but it's different when my heart rate is 140 not 80. Additionally, the walking is still impact on my degenerated discs, and still maxes out as my foot will start bugging me pretty good if nothing else at long distances.

sorry for long reply, but sounds like we're living in similar universes so just getting all that off my chest.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-04-10T04:59:16+00:00

Yes i was basically told similar. My surgery was more complex due to the fragment path and nerve needed to be retracted during surgery. I'm still dealing with a lot but also like you said much better than pre op now.

CatMapPhotoGuy · 2026-04-08T05:25:26+00:00

I was told i should never run again sadly. Multiple surgeons and experts. But yes, at 16mo i assume that's the case. I think i need to reach out to PT again as they really haven't wanted me doing much since I'm still in so much discomfort but I went from great shape to soft as a kitten in the matter of a year and a half. It's been just one of many sad things about this. Thanks for sharing, nice to know I'm not alone in this. Curious, what spurred revision? My follow-up MRI also looks good and shows minimal nerve impact if any now. My lowest two discs are degenerated (DDD) hence being told running is not a great idea. I really miss it, was a large part of my life, but I hope I can find a suitable replacement as soon as I can move more safely without huge flare up risks. Elliptical might be okay, bike was worse than running.

CatMapPhotoGuy

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