I want to tell you more about spinal stenosis and how to live with it. Spinal stenosis causes back pain, and it usually occurs after age of 50. When arthritis in the spine can lead to a narrowing of the areas in the low back, which compresses nerves within the canal, causing pressure on the spinal cord or one or more of the spinal nerves, the compression of the nerves can lead to pain and numbness in the legs and may cause the pain that you are experiencing in your legs.
Spinal stenosis may be caused by arthritis involving the spine, a herniated or slipped disc, an injury that causes pressure on the nerve roots or the spinal cord itself, a defect in the spine that was present at birth or tumors in the spine. Well, how do you know that you have it? The narrowing of the spinal canal can result in a number of symptoms. Sometimes people get numbness, tingling, cramping, or pain in the back, buttocks, thighs, or calves. Some people get weakness in a portion of a leg.
People usually have the symptoms when they’re more upright. They usually disappear when you sit down or lean forward. That’s why when you go to the supermarket and lean over a cart, it relieves your pain. When symptoms get serious, you can have difficulty or imbalance with walking or problems controlling your bowel or bladder. Well, how do you get diagnosed? You get diagnosed by seeing a doctor to get a medical history, an MRI or a CAT scan.
Can spinal stenosis be treated without surgery? Hundreds of thousands of back surgeries are performed every year in the United States, but if you struggle with spinal stenosis, you may be able to find relief and avoid surgery. In many cases, spinal stenosis surgery can be avoided by using medications, physical therapy or epidural injections. Epidural injections are when people put cortisol around the nerves that are inflamed in your spinal canal.
This can sometimes relieve your pain, but if your spinal stenosis gets worse and you develop a foot drop where one of your feet becomes weak, surgery may be indicated and cannot be avoided. In rare cases, some people experience problems controlling their bowel or bladder movements because of spinal stenosis. In this case, you will have to definitely have a surgical evaluation.
I hope this information is beneficial to you and that now you understand what is spinal stenosis, what are its symptoms, how it’s diagnosed, some of the treatments, and when surgery can be of eliminated
