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What are the Most Common Causes of Leg Pain and Numbness?

By Greg Caramenico
Updated: May 17, 2024
Views: 11,924
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The common causes of leg pain and numbness include arthritis and complications from spinal diseases. Short-term, usually reversible leg pain comes from injuries to the leg, like torn muscles, and from brief gout attacks. Common spinal causes of leg pain and numbness are sciatica, resulting from a slipped disc in the lower spinal column, and spinal lumbar stenosis. Another source of leg pain is vascular disease, including chronic varicose veins or serious conditions like thrombosis that threaten vital organs along with the legs.

Common leg injuries like hairline fractures and torn muscles account for sudden leg pain, especially in otherwise healthy patients. Additionally, chronic rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and the complications of diabetes can trigger regular or periodic symptoms. Acute gout triggers pain at knee or ankle joints, which can be crippling during attacks when uric acid crystals accumulate in the joint. Movement causes severe leg pain as a result. Some nerve and soft tissue pain in the leg results from diabetic neuropathies, the gradual destruction of peripheral nerves that accompanies unchecked advanced diabetes.

A frequent cause of leg pain and numbness is spinal stenosis, increased pressure on the spinal cord due to narrowing of the spinal canal. While stenosis can occur anywhere on the spine, lumbar stenosis affects the nerves within the legs. Patients with lumbar spinal stenosis report pain, weakness, or numbness in the buttocks and legs. Often, the pain and numbness are most acute when they are sitting for long periods of time, and partially diminish with walking and a change of position.

Also called lumbar disc disease, sciatica causes leg pain and numbness or tingling that originates in the low back and radiates down the back of the leg. It comes from a radiculopathy, a disc that has slipped from its normal position in the vertebral column, pressuring the root of the sciatic nerve in the lower back. Sciatica is commonly felt on only one side of the body, with pain presenting in only one leg. While it can occur in any age group, sciatica is more frequent in middle age.

Deep venous thrombosis (DVT) is a clot in a large vein in the thigh or lower leg that blocks blood flow and causes pain and swelling. This kind of leg pain is dangerous because there is risk of a clot breaking off and drifting into the bloodstream, where it can block blood vessels in the brain or heart. DVTs usually cause tenderness and redness in the affected leg, in addition to visible distension of the veins. Varicose veins, less serious but still painful, are a common source of leg pain and raise the risk of developing DVT.

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Discussion Comments
By anon354819 — On Nov 11, 2013

I have trouble with my legs - both of them, in terms of numbness, hotness and a feeling of heaviness and a sense of restricted movement at night. I also experience pain in particular in my left knee, mainly on the inside, but also around my knee in general, and this latter complaint I have been told is osteoarthritis.

Although I have pain occasionally walking upstairs, and sometimes a sharp pain on walking on flat land, most of my suffering heat, heaviness and stiffness comes at night while I am lying down in bed, or a lot of stiffness if I have been sitting for any length of time. I am able to get up, but I experience extreme stiffness. I try to go for a 30 minute walk three to four days a week.

From reading the above I am wondering if my problem is osteoarthritis of left knee, but also lumbar spinal stenosis. Walking in daytime, as I have said, is not usually a problem and many would not even notice I had any trouble of the nature I describe that I have at night, at all. Any comments from any professionals or other well-informed people on this diagnosis?

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