Spinal Stenosis Symptoms.
Spinal Stenosis Symptoms are many - and the severity of these symptoms varies greatly from person to person.
Symptoms such as pain standing up; pain on sitting down; leg weakness and cramps.
When you have spinal stenosis symptoms you truly realise how central your spine is to transmitting feeling around your body.
OK - let's have a look at each of the typical symptoms in turn. I have listed the symptoms I see most often in association
with spinal stenosis.
However, items 1 and 2 below are very significant and most consistent in the sufferers of spinal stenosis that I have seen:
- Pain on standing up - is a very frequent symptom. This due to the mechanical effects standing upright
has on the narrowing of the canal, which is the main objective finding in spinal stenosis.
Standing, along with most extension postures, further increases the narrowing of the canal. This in turn increases the pressure
on the nerves, resulting in an increase in spinal stenosis symptoms.
Commonly, clients with spinal stenosis report that bending forwards or sitting down eases their symptoms.
This is your body’s natural way of unloading the stenotic area in your spine.
- Pain relief when sitting down - is a very common finding in spinal stenosis sufferers.
This is due to the effect sitting has on the stenotic spine. It unloads the narrowed area where your spinal
stenosis is, and it reduces the compression pressure from the affected area. Both these factors are responsible for
the easing of your symptoms when sitting.
- Back pain - is very common and due to the compression stenosis has on the bones,
ligaments, muscles, discs and nerves at the affected level. They become strained, impinged and eventually inflamed - thereby causing pain.
- Sciatica - occurs if the peripheral nerves such as the sciatic nerve
are compromised or impinged in any way.
- Leg pain - is associated with stenosis, due to the mechanical compression it causes to the nerves in
your lower back, resulting in a referral of pain into your leg. One example is sciatica.
- Leg weakness and leg numbness - is due to the impinged and compressed nerves in your spine. Compressed
nerves can cause pain, pins and needles, numbness and weakness. You may have one or all symptoms at any one time.
- Leg cramps - are also common and due to the compression effect spinal stenosis has on the nerves in
your back at the affected level.
- Bowel and bladder problems - occur in spinal stenosis if your lumbar and sacral levels are affected.
Most commonly if the very base of your spine at the lumbo-sacral junction is affected it may cause bowel or bladder problems.
- Foot pain - is associated with spinal stenosis mainly if your lower back is the affected area.
This is due to direct compression on the nerve in your lower back that feeds your foot, as well as the reduction in
conductivity in the nerve due to the disease and the compression.
- Shoulder pain - will occur if the spinal stenosis affects joints in your
neck or upper back.
This is due to the nature of referral from your spine to your shoulder. It is a fact that certain joints and nerves in your neck and
upper back refer to your shoulder area.
These are but a few of the many symptoms of spinal stenosis that I have seen in my clients, but are in my experience the most commom presentations of spinal stenosis pain.
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