What Is Causing Pain Down My Leg?
You have pain running down your leg and numbness in your foot? What is going on? Is the pain coming from your back, a bulging disc or a “pinched” nerve? This is when you call Dr. Iodice, right 😊! In this blog, we will discuss how Dr. Iodice determines the cause of pain or numbness and tingling in your leg or foot. As always, we want to empower you to take control of your pain and understanding the root cause can help you do that.
Pain running down the leg is often called Sciatica. The sciatic nerve is the longest, largest nerve in your body. Your sciatic nerve roots start in your low back and run down the back of each leg. Sciatica is the pain you feel when the nerve gets compressed or irritated. Sciatica can cause burning sensations, muscle weakness, numbness, sharp or shooting pain or tingling.
Sciatica can be caused by herniated discs (also called bulging or slipped discs). The spinal discs are flexible cartilage structures between the vertebrae in your back. A herniated disc occurs when the soft, jelly-like center of the disc pushes out to the side. This makes the shape of the disc change, like a tire that has a bubble after hitting a pot hole. The herniated disc can put pressure on the nerves exiting the spine. This situation would more correctly be diagnosed as a radiculopathy, though the term sciatica is often used to describe it.
Spinal Stenosis can also cause pain down one or both legs. Spinal stenosis happens when the space around your spinal cord becomes too narrow. This is usually caused by arthritis and bone spurs that irritate or compress the nerves in your low back.
Sciatica can also be caused by a tight muscle in your hip or buttock that puts pressure on the sciatic nerve and causes pain down the leg.
How do you know if it is a herniated disc, arthritis in your spine or a tight muscle in your leg causing all the pain and numbness? It is always important to get a complete physical examination, but this blog will give you some insight into how we make a differential diagnosis.
Dr. Iodice will take you through a series of motions and notice if your symptoms get better or worse with certain postures and repeated motions. In general, if your symptoms are caused by a disc in your low back, when you bend the spine in certain ways the pain down your leg will get worse or better. It’s not always quite this simple and sometimes moving your leg to a different position is needed to change the symptoms. As a general rule, when symptoms are traveling from one area of the body to another, whatever area of the body that is moved and creates symptoms is the origin.
For example, if the sciatica is caused by spinal stenosis or arthritis then bending forward often decreases pain down the legs and back bending increases pain down the legs. This information, combined with other findings helps to identify the source of the symptoms.
Also, Dr. Iodice will check muscle length and flexibility of your hips. The piriformis muscle runs across the back of your hip and the sciatic nerve runs under this muscle. If you stretch your piriformis muscle and the pain down your leg increases that tells us a nerve entrapment at this muscle is the cause of your symptoms.
There are several other evaluations Dr. Iodice will perform to determine the cause of your sciatica; such as, testing your reflexes, muscle strength and skin sensation. Careful evaluation is necessary to determine the cause of your pain or numbness, and then Dr. Iodice will tailor a treatment plan to relieve symptoms and get you back to your active lifestyle! Though sciatica is very painful, there are often effective self-treatments that we assign patients to decrease their discomfort and greatly speed their recovery.
