Here's the honest picture. Disc degeneration is mostly an age thing — it shows up on scans of riders and non-riders alike, including plenty of people with no pain at all. There's no solid evidence that motorcycling specifically accelerates the degeneration itself. So riding isn't automatically "making your discs worse" in the structural sense.
What riding can do is aggravate the symptoms. Research on whole-body vibration and prolonged sitting has generally linked both to more low-back complaints, and a motorcycle delivers both for hours at a time — plus sharp shocks from potholes and expansion joints that a sensitive disc segment tends to notice. That's why the same rider can feel fine after a smooth 40-minute loop and wrecked after two hours of rough county roads.
Because degenerative disc disease is a diagnosed condition, your doctor should be in this conversation — they know your levels, your symptoms, and whether anything about your case changes the advice. If they're comfortable with you riding, the game is managing the dose: suspension set properly for your weight, a relaxed posture that doesn't pin you in a slouch, real breaks taken before the pain starts rather than after, and a contact point that spreads pressure and absorbs the hits your suspension misses. You're not curing anything with setup — you're buying back comfortable miles, which is the actual goal.
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