Understanding lower back pain
Most people will experience lower back pain at some point in their lives, with chronic lower back pain a major source of disability, missed work, and health care expenses. But lower back pain can have a wide variety of causes, with radicular pain, or radiculopathy, accounting for up to 40 percent of it.
How is this unique from other types of back pain? “Lumbar radiculopathy is the result of a pinched nerve in the low back,” says spine surgeon Amit Jain, MD, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
If you’re having lower back pain that radiates down your leg, it could be this type of nerve pain. Read on for more about what it feels like, what causes it, and what you can do about it. Then check out more surprising reasons for back pain.
What is radiculopathy?
Radicular pain can actually occur anywhere along the spine where nerve roots are pinched. “Radiculopathy means ‘radicle’ or ‘root’ pathology [disease], and affects the spinal nerve roots in the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, or sacral spine,” says Andrew Illig, DO, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at Westmed Medical Group in Yonkers,
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