Will Harlow

So it was a typical case, you know, rushing in, no warmup, bad technique, bang, I felt this pain down the back of my leg.

And like any good physio, I thought, I've pulled my hamstring.

But of course I hadn't.

It was probably a disc injury.

And that really brought it home for me because I've been helping people with this problem for so long without ever having suffered myself.

And then having that pain for three, four months, having the numb foot, worrying if it was ever going to get better, that really brought it home as to how debilitating this can be.

So it kind of renewed my interest in helping people with it.

So there are lots of different ways to treat sciatica because there are lots of different things that can cause it.

The most common cause is an issue with one of the discs in the spine, so a disc bulge or a herniation.

But really anything that presses on one of the nerve roots or irritates one of the nerve roots in the lower part of the spine can cause sciatica.

So it could be a disc, it could be a joint, it could be a muscle that traps it.

It could just be general inflammation.

And sometimes there's sciatica and we have no idea what's caused it.

There's no diagnosis there.

The person just has the pain.

So once upon a time, I used to try and treat sciatica based on what the tissue was that was causing it.

But then I realized that was an oversimplification.

So the person needs treating as a whole, not as an injury, if that makes sense.

So what I tend to do with people now who have it, and this is something people can do at home,

is most sciatica is linked to movements of the spine, about 90%.