Causes of Spinal Stenosis - Health Channel

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Causes of Spinal Stenosis |

Dr. Ronald Tolchin, Medical Director of the Baptist Health Center for Spine Care, says spinal stenosis is very common and happens when arthritis occurs and the discs start to shrink and they start to compress the nerves.

He explains patients will experience nerve pain or numbness and tingling into the extremities due to the pinching of the nerve. He also points out spinal stenosis happens in multiple areas at once.

Transcript

Doctor what about spinal stenosis what about that one so spinal stenosis is something I see a lot as this arthritis occurs and the discs start to shrink that I mentioned it starts to compress the nerves and here you’re shown in this schematic that the nerves being compressed and it’s being pinched that’s the common term we think of a pinched nerve and it starts to go down in the distribution that that nerve serves so in this case it’s going down the outside of the upper leg and down the front and outside of the lower leg and then into the foot so patients will experience nerve pain or numbness and tingling into the extremity due to the pinching of the nerves now with spinal stenosis it happens at multiple areas at once not just one nerve it happens and you may get a vague discomfort in the leg you may get heaviness in the leg fatigue when you’re walking you have to sit down for example after a few blocks and that’s typical of spinal stenosis from arthritis in the spine all right and again we mentioned how having good posture is so important and there’s sometimes a recommendation to use a posture ball we have a video that shows how ro we have a graphic actually my apologies we have a graphic to show this and doctor what is your suggestion on posture balls so I think that can be very helpful especially in the workplace you see now someone sitting on the posture ball and working at the computer she has to contract the muscles of her core we talked a little bit on let on the last show about core strengthening so the abdominal muscles the back muscles of the around the spine and she has to constantly work those muscles to sit straight on the ball because the ball wants to be in motion exact so she has to contract the muscles so it’s actually like working up you

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