From personal experience I believe that you do have to be very careful any time you have a protusion in contact with the nerve. Since I was in the military, the first thing I did when I contracted serious back pain was try to gut it out with the over the counter pain meds from the drugstore. When the pain became so bad that I could not walk more than ten steps, I went to the doctor who had me visit a neurosurgeon who took the first MRI. The insurance company insisted on physical therapy to see if they could avoid paying for a surgery. Finally, 29 days after the excruciating pain began, I was placed in surgery where the disc was removed. The surgeon said it had exploded into pieces. One piece was really pressing into the nerve. Well, that was 1990. Four months later, I deployed to Desert Shield/Desert Storm as a soldier. But, almost twenty years later, my left leg and foot still give me all sorts of trouble with ache, weakness and poor response to nerve tests. limp constantly. I'm pretty sure the lingering affects are due to the piece of disc protuding into the nerve for so long.

It is probably little help, but it does seem to me that individual histories, with apparently similar causes, are very variable. My own experience dating back to the early 90's was of fairly mild NP until suddenly in the space of two weeks in 2006, everything went wrong and I lost much control of my lower body. Spinal decompression surgery was then the only option, and then only to prevent further worsening. The spinal nerve had been damaged (myelomalacia) and now little or no chance of improvement so I am left with poor control over my lower limbs and ever-present NP.