Hello
 

Hello everyone. I just signed up and am having difficulty navigating my way through this support group.
I am having problems with peripheral neuropathy in my feet. I am on lyrica for about a month for electrical spasms from my right buttock down my leg to my foot. The medication has helped with that. But recently my feet have gotten worse with the tightness. There is no numbness and no pain. Just the tight feeling. I have complained to my doctor for about 5 years that something has been happening. I have sciatic pain when I sit too long. I had a bad fall onto my back about 6 years ago. I am currently waiting for an MRI. I am 62 years old, female and retired in 2015.
I am looking for support. I need to know what this is and what I can do about it. I have always been extremely active. Do I have a future to look forward to in a wheelchair or amputation? I am not diabetic. I am quite scared about all this. Please let me know if anyone has similar symptoms. Thank you.

Welcome,
Has there been any Xrays or other imaging, or advanced PT evaluation, or possibly a chiropractor evaluation?

tightness
sciatic pain (it can shoot electrical spasms from buttock down leg )
bad fall onto my back
These make me think some soft tissue & alignment/body work might be something to look into..

Meds won't fix the issue.. They might be needed at times, if it is not easily fixable...
Body work, PT /DC may be a better option for a possible fix..

https://www.neurotalk.org/members/10...cture5102.html

You can explore You tube videos on sciatic pain, bodywork and such.

Hi Ontario Canada

Welcome to NeuroTalk :).

As well as the good ideas from Jo*Mar the peripheral neuropathy forum is worth checking out.

You can also use the Search option here (https://www.neurotalk.org/search.php) to find topics and threads which could help you.

Best wishes.

Welcome Ontario Canada :yahoo:

Hope you find an answer.

Kitt

Welcome, Ontario Canada!

I've had several sciatica attacks over the years, and if they were bad enough, I had physical therapy for them, and that helped a lot.

Other times I just tried to rest whenever the pain was kicking up.

I understand that sciatica is often due to degenerative disc disease. As we get older, the discs degenerate and cause problems for us.

I've known some people who've had surgery for degenerative disc disease but nowadays more conservative treatment is preferred. I think we're supposed to wait it out, use common sense, rest when the pain is bad, etc.

Thank you very much for your responses. Tomorrow I have an appt with a podiatrist in hopes he can help with this until I can have MRI.
I have been to a chiro and have had physio in the past. I think the physio did help me as things seem to be accelerating since I have not been going.
I look forward to any further suggestions and I pray this is sciatica that can be fixed with physio or exercises or whatever I need to do.
So nice to have found a support group.

Welcome and don't even think about a wheel chair future. There is so much info on this forum and at almost 82 I continue to manage a almost 40 yr of sciatic nerve damage from hysterectomy back in my 40's..sitting right now it's burning....

But I have stretches and do them a lot during my "retired" days....

I take ibuprofen/extra strength tylenol 1 each every 6 hrs to keep moving. With food in stomach and looking at taking a new supplement soon for even more stomach protection.

I also deal with neuropathy from hip replacement, which I often call a disaster, but again I'm forever stretching and using a lot of supplements....there is a lot of info on this neuropathy issue in the PN forum here.....

Toprician homepathic lotion is my favorite for pain issues and again I've posed a lot about this wonderful product. Again welcome...and a lot of good info here.

Welcome to NeuroTalk. :grouphug:

Thank you to everyone who has responded. I finally had an MRI on Friday and now wait for results. Lower back including L4 and L5.
Since Friday I have had incredible pulsating electrical spasms going down to my right foot from my right butt cheek. I have been taking the lyrica prescribed. Although I never Have any pain, this is the most frustrating uncontrollable feeling. I want to burst into tears. The heel of my feet feel like blobs on my foot. I still have feeling in both my feet but the tightness is incredible. Please please help with some suggestions of trying to stop this. I don’t know what the problem is but I am praying the MRI will show something and that there will be something available to fix it. I can’t imagine going through the rest of my life with this.

Ontario: The Lyrica MAY NOT be a good friend of yours. Check out the laundry list of side effects and that drug. Look at all the wonderful supplements so many of us use and many have gone the drug route and got off that path....I never went that route.

If it's sciatica, I've found that what helps is good physical therapy and just time and more time. You might have to wait it out but eventually it will probably get better.

In the meantime you can go easy on the bad leg whenever possible. If you're standing at the kitchen sink, for instance, put that foot up on the shelf ledge if you have one under the sink--to relieve the pressure on the leg. It's more comfortable that way.

If you've been doing something--like standing or walking--for too long and the leg is acting up with pain, it's time to stop and rest. Maybe you'll need to rest for hours, maybe for the rest of the day, or maybe just for a short time. If you keep on doing your activities with rest breaks in mind, you may find that the pain will get better even if it's only a gradual improvement.

Some physical therapists use ultrasound and electrostim to improve the situation, and I've found that those help too.

Thank you. I will get some grapeseed extract. I know that lyrica has many side affects. Not good. But I honestly do not know where to turn. I am not good at navigating this site to see others recommendations.

Do others have the tight sock feeling in feet? Or the spasms and tingling down leg from butt to foot?
I am waiting for MRI results.

Hi
You may also want to post on our forum for Peripheral Neuropathy
https://www.neurotalk.org/peripheral-neuropathy/

Ontario: I'll mention a couple more things I tell others when they join with this issue:

Inosine the supplement really helps my neuropathy issue.

Topicals for the areas like: Topricin homeopathic lotion, aspercream with lidocaine, ultra tiger balm, Arnica with DMSO and others but I buy them online from health suppliers and amazon.

And I take 1 ibuprofen and 1 extra strength tylenol every 6 hours and make sure food in in my stomach....this keeps me in management.

I am mega yrs older than you and also deal with advanced arthritis....so a lot but I work hard to keep moving and relatively low burn/tingle issues and all t his came from damaged hip replacement.

Go to the PN group., there is so much info there. Many also use ALA as I recall. Also otc supplement.

*** Thank you for this info. I am currently having spasms into my girl parts. It is horrible. And then then spasms go down my leg to my foot. Is this normal for sciatic issues?

I have sciatic issues from hysterectomy about 40 yrs ago and no spasms here...I go thru periods when the sciatic nerve quiets down and then it acts up again when I go thru something like a horrible knee infection I had in 2016, long saga there and in hosptial and rehabs for 4.5 months, lying around and not walking caused more sciatic mess.

Learn some sciatic nerve stretches....they are out there to find.

Also, do you take magnesium which many in the world are deficient....lack of mag can cause spasms....you can find mega info on this support group on magnesium deficiency.

It's not even clear sciatic is your issue, is it Ontario.

Hi Ontario

I have experienced both a trapped sciatic nerve at 28 and Peripheral Neuropathy (PN) in my 50s so have experienced both sets of symptoms.

The sharp shooting pains in the groin are not sciatica. I experienced those symptoms in the gentleman area at the height of my PN. The pain was intense and pulsating. But worse was the mental anguish. What if things just continue to get worse, what terrors lay ahead? But things did not get worse. They got better. After two weeks or so those symptoms disappeared.

I have nothing more than a theory but I believe that PN makes all other pain worse. So that if you are vulnerable to sciatica, PN will exacerbate those symptoms.

My approach to dealing with PN is to create the optimum conditions that allow the body to heal itself. Optimum diet and nutrition, supplements, exercise, stretching, massage and rest have all helped me.
You can find a variety of different resources on this site. I wish you well🙂

Spasms in the "girl parts" wouldn't usually be due to sciatica, at least not in my experience.

I was having groin pain episodes on the left for a while, and they were an "adverse event" of the MS drug I was taking (Copaxone). When I stopped the drug, the pain stopped. So sometimes groin pain can be related to a medicine you're taking.

But spasms going down your leg to your foot are fairly typical of sciatica.

Thank you so much for the info on supplements. I recently had a doc appt for MRI results. MRI was on my back to rule out a pinched nerve. There is nothing showing up on the test. The doc said about me wanting an answer as to how this started and a fix. I said yes. He just said neuropathy is not curable if it is neuropathy, however next appt will be with a neurologist. I have weened myself off the lyrica. Not a nice drug, but it did work to stop the spasms. Still have the tight sock feeling. No pain. Thankful for that.
I appreciate this support group.