trapped nerve/hamstring pain/nerve gliding

[lurgan liar]

Hi i strained my hamstring from overuse back in in May ..a few weeks later sciatica symptoms started to emerge.

tingling in my foot, my hamstring would cramp up every time i stood up for longer than 2 or 3 minutes and every time i went for a walk i'd have to stop and squat down for the cramping to go away.

With all of the above symptoms I have absolutely no back pain.

I have been back and forward to my GP and am so frustrated, all he could do was prescribe anti inflammatories and say to come back in a week... well its 2 months later and i'm fed up .

I went to a physio today and he said its a neural problem and said the nerve is being irritated ... he got me to do some nerve gliding exercises..and said it would take a while for me to fully recover.

does anyone have any experience of these nerve glide exercises working?

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[evosy1978]

hy there,

Sorry i cant help with your question but i was just wondering what nerve glide exercises are?

ta

[lurgan liar]

hy there,

Sorry i cant help with your question but i was just wondering what nerve glide exercises are?

ta

Well i'm no expert,i only found out about this yesterday but the way he explained it was ...

the nerve is incased within a sheath .... it can get stuck to this sheath due to either tight muscles, scar tissues forming etc etc and this can cause the tension and thus the tingling numbness and reffered pain.

so the idea is to gently glide the nerve back and forth to get it moving again inside the sheath ..... the thing is your not actually stretching the nerve as this is the very thing that is causing it to flare up ...but you are letting it glide through the sheath ...

i think the rationale behind it is that once it becomes loose again in the sheath the surrounding tight muscles and joints will free themselves almost instantaneously as a result ....

at least thats what i am hoping will happen ...

[Exmoor rider]

Hi, sorry I can't help either but, which nerve exactly is your physio trying to ease with the "nerve gliding"?

(I work with my physio on try to ease nerve pain which goes down my leg, but I know it comes from my back).

[lurgan liar]

Its my sciatic nerve....

the tension is in my hamstring ... when i stand for too long my hamstrings just tense up to the point where i have to sit down ... i've no back pain at all

same with walking ... as i walk my hamstring starts to tense up to the point where i start to limp...eventually i have to come to a complete stand still and squat down for a few minutes...to get it to go away ...

i've only been to one session with my physio but he says it's neural tension and the nerve could possibly be trapped inside its sheath somewhere causing it to tug further down my leg ...

[giurgiug]

Hi Lurgan. I've got exactly thye same problem like you.: similar pain to sciatica pain, but I feel it mainly on my hamstrings , but NO PAIN on my back. Everybody is telling me that is a Boulge disc on my back causing the problem. I am frustrated because for more than 2 month I am treating this pain with no results. It is very hard for me to understand how can the back to cause the pain in my leg, when I have no pain at all on my back. The explanation :"...nerve...get stuck to this sheath due to either tight muscles, scar tissues forming etc ...." sounds preaty logical to me. I am interested if there are some " experts" who agrre to this explanation ? ...and I would like to know what are the exercises I have to do to improve my conditiion? Could be this problem caused by some substances or some lack of minerals on my diet ?

[Ironmike]

Hi all,

Ok, as a caveat, I am a final year physiotherapy student, but the nerve movement exercises he was giving you are called neural glides, neural flossing if you're an osteo, or something similar sounding. He will probably have done the slump test with you where you are asked to sit on the edge of the couch, you get put into position, and then you move either your head or foot to a new position to see if it relieves/brings on your neural pain.

In essence, nerves within the body can become trapped through tight muscles, and as such when you do particular movements, these nerves aren't free to move, and therefore give you problems.

The fact that you squat to relieve your pain would make me suspicious of lumbar spine involvement. You are relieving pressure on the nerve through squatting, but you are also potentially gapping the lumbar vertebrae. L5/S1 is a common source of problem and can refer to the places you state - i.e. your foot. In terms of your hamstring cramping, I would hypothesise that this is not related to sciatic type pain, but a remnant of the strain to your hamstring. How severe was it? If it was badly strained it could well still be weak - have you been doing any sort of rehab/strengthening exercises with it? Do you get hamstring issues without the foot pain? Do you feel like you trip up more, or have any foot drop or dragging? Any weakness that you have noticed to the foot/toes?

I have done a quick literature search on the effectiveness of neural glides for hamstring/sciatic problems, and the evidence is a bit sparse, but does point towards a benefit with performing this technique in the few papers available. The most recent one I could find that roughly matches what you have described is here:

CONSERVATIVE REHABILITATION OF SCIATIC NERVE INJURY FOLLOWING HAMSTRING TEAR

Maybe someone more experienced can give better anecdotal evidence from their practice. From personal point of view, I do neural glide techniques on people I see with sports injuries during my sports massage work, and it does seem to give relief from symptoms, particularly upper limb.

Exercise wise, you could try something like this:

33.3 Hamstrings Sciatic Nerve Mobility Exercise - YouTube

However, this position doesn't have the chin tucked towards the chest. I presume they are saying that they just want to tension the L3 downwards levels, but to put the whole neural system on a stretch, I would also advise have the chin to chest.

Hope that helps.