In life, there are patients with low back pain: they are generally middle-aged and older people over 40 years old, often have a history of chronic low back pain, some have a history of more than ten years, and then there is a side or lower limb soreness, hemp Pain and weakness. The severity of symptoms is often related to body position: it is increased when standing upright and stretching; it is relieved when bending and squatting. After the patient often walks for tens of meters or hundreds of meters, the lower limbs are sore, numb and weak, and they must rest and rest after the above symptoms are relieved. However, walking is not far away, and there are symptoms of waist and leg pain, and the condition continues to increase, resulting in unstable gait and inability to walk. Severe cases are accompanied by difficulty in urination and constipation.

Another phenomenon is that when you ride a bicycle, the waist and leg pain of such patients will "feel much better." Some patients can ride a few kilometers without any symptoms, so they often use walking trolleys, bicycles or battery cars instead of walking.

These patients often think that they are general low back pain or lumbar disc herniation, or the natural result of human aging, did not go to the hospital early. As the symptoms worsened, I had to go to the orthopedic examination and found that this was not ordinary lumbar or leg pain or lumbar disc herniation, but lumbar spinal stenosis.

Years of disrepair, "water pipes" narrowed

Lumbar spinal stenosis is one of the most common causes of chronic low back pain. The incidence of middle-aged and elderly people over 40 years old is high. However, it has not been recognized and valued by people like disc herniation, and the treatment of this disease is quite different from lumbar disc herniation, resulting in many patients not getting proper treatment and suffering from this disease for a long time.

With the increase of age, the human intervertebral disc first degenerates, the height of the intervertebral space decreases, the abnormal activity increases, and the epiphyseal growth of the posterior border of the vertebral body is secondary. Due to excessive load, the posterior facet joints appear degenerative hyperplasia, degeneration of the ligamentum flavum, and some patients may have lamina hypertrophy. The four walls of the spinal canal are abnormally thickened, and the volume of the spinal canal is drastically reduced, eventually causing the horsetail and nerve roots to be compressed and the nerve compression symptoms appear. Its pathogenesis is like the long-lost tap water pipe lumen narrows due to fouling.

Why does low back pain reduce when riding a bicycle?

Because the waist of the patient stays naturally bent when riding, the lumbar spine is slightly enlarged, and the compression of the cauda equina and nerve roots is relieved, so the back pain is also reduced. “It’s a ten-mile ride, and it’s hard to walk” is a distinctive feature of the disease. In the same way, changes in body position (such as bending over) can also reduce nerve compression and temporarily relieve pain.

In addition, if the most severe part of the lumbar spinal stenosis is located laterally, the main compression is the nerve root, which is similar to the symptoms of sciatica similar to lumbar disc herniation, but the pain is often more serious than the simple disc herniation. More stubborn and more difficult to treat.

Do not feel free to do waist massage

Lumbar spinal stenosis often coincides with lumbar disc herniation. Patients with low back pain often think that they are disc herniation, but neglect the existence of spinal stenosis.

If you mistakenly think that it is "lumbar protrusion", long-term dependence on taking medicine, or going to an informal private clinic, and performing conservative treatments such as improper massage, acupuncture, and spinal canal closure are not effective, and sometimes counterproductive.