This is how you can relieve leg pain caused by lumbar spinal stenosis!

In real life, lumbar spinal stenosis is a lumbar disease. Suffering from lumbar spinal stenosis will easily cause lower limb pain, especially in the calf area. Walking or lifting heavy objects will make the pain more severe. Lumbar spinal stenosis should be checked and treated in time, and some massage can also be used to relieve pain symptoms.

1. Characteristics of leg pain caused by vascular stenosis: Vascular intermittent claudication often affects one side of the limb, with coldness, numbness or tightness in the sole of the foot. After activity, the calf or foot muscles swell or twitch. The leg pain symptoms can be relieved after standing and resting, without the need to bend over or squat to relieve the symptoms like spinal stenosis leg pain.

Patients with vascular stenosis will experience painful symptoms of relative blood supply deficiency when riding a bicycle as the lower limbs move and the demand for blood supply increases.

Patients with leg pain due to vascular stenosis may experience malnutrition symptoms such as decreased skin temperature, rough skin, and sparse hair in the affected limbs. The pulse of the dorsalis pedis, popliteal artery, or femoral artery may be weakened or absent. Patients with severe ischemia may experience persistent pain in the lower limbs, which is obvious at night and is resting pain. In elderly male patients, vascular and neurogenic intermittent claudication often coexists.

Differential diagnosis can be made through color Doppler ultrasound of the lower limb arteries and lumbar magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Vigilance should be exercised to avoid misdiagnosis and mistreatment.

2. Characteristics of leg pain caused by spinal stenosis: Spinal stenosis can cause intermittent claudication of the lower limbs and affect walking. The symptoms are often aggravated when the lumbar spine is overextended and relieved when the lumbar spine is slightly flexed. Therefore, such patients can ride bicycles and will not experience leg pain symptoms or aggravation due to exercise; the symptoms are aggravated when standing and walking, especially downhill, and relieved when sitting.

Some leg pain is caused by lumbar disc herniation compressing the nerve roots, which may be aggravated by coughing. Physical examination of such patients often shows normal skin temperature and color of both lower limbs and normal dorsalis pedis artery pulsation. Clinically, differential diagnosis can be made through color Doppler ultrasound of the lower limb arteries and lumbar magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Vascular stenosis and spinal stenosis are the two most common diseases that cause lower limb pain. The typical clinical manifestation is intermittent claudication that affects walking, and the misdiagnosis and mistreatment rate is relatively high in clinical practice.