Risk factors are the part of sciatica you may still be able to change, so they are the cheapest place to look first.
Short answer: repeated movement habits are one named risk
Spine-health points to how people move at work and at home. Specifically, people who often bend their spine forward or sideways or raise their arms frequently above the shoulder level may be at risk of sciatica. The wording is "may be", so read it as a prompt to check your habits and not as a verdict.
Checking your own routine
Ask yourself how often in a normal week you bend forward or sideways, or work with your arms above shoulder height. Write down the tasks and roughly how often you do them. That list is cheap to make and gives a clinician something concrete to react to. MedlinePlus on sciatica is a plain public page to read alongside it.
Next steps
- List the tasks at home or work that involve those movements.
- Note which of them you cannot easily change.
- Ask your clinician whether the list matters for your symptoms.
- Read OrthoInfo's page on sciatica and compare what it says with your clinician's view.
A ledger note on risk lists
A risk list is a starting point, not a verdict, so ask what changing each item would cost you in time and money. If you are in Little Falls, a change that you can keep up beats a bigger one that you drop. WebMD's pain management center offers wider background on pain topics. We are an information site, not a clinic. Our comparisons stop short of medical advice.