Walking legs numb, waist also uncomfortable, many people will only think of the “lumbar disc”, because the typical symptoms of lumbar disc people is waist pain, leg numbness. In this case you are wrong, there is another disease, it is not less harmful than lumbar disc, it is “lumbar spinal stenosis”. The cause of lumbar spinal stenosis is a very common disease in orthopedics: as we age, the intervertebral disc degenerates, causing hyperplasia of the ligaments and hypertrophy of the vertebrae and small joints, making the effective volume of the spinal canal in one or more planes smaller, resulting in compression of the nerve roots of the caudal vertebrae and causing symptoms such as lumbar and leg pain. In simple terms, your lumbar spinal canal is equivalent to the water pipe in our home, rusting over the years, the pipe is getting narrower and narrower, the nervous system “living” inside is compressed, so the back and leg pain appears. Typical symptoms of lumbar spinal stenosis: intermittent claudication What is intermittent claudication is that when you stand or walk for a period of time, your legs will have different sensations such as pain, numbness, heaviness and weakness, but when you take a break, the uncomfortable feeling in your legs will be reduced again. If this happens to you, it is likely that lumbar spinal stenosis is “at work”! Moreover, the symptoms of intermittent claudication can last for many years, and the symptoms gradually worsen slowly over time. Some patients can initially walk normally for a few hundred meters, but slowly develop to numbness, pain, and weakness in the lower limbs after walking a dozen steps or standing upright for less than five minutes. In some patients, it can be so serious that it is difficult to walk. Therefore, the middle-aged and elderly people with back and leg pain, do not move to label themselves as “lumbar disc herniation”.