LEG PAIN

Intermittent claudication.

Leg pain is a common affliction in the chiropractic clinic. There are a host of causes. One of them is Intermittent Claudication.

This nasty condition relates to a muscle starved of oxygen, usually in the calf or thigh. In this sense it is closely related to its first cousin, angina, which is the heart muscle starved of oxygen.

Patients typically describe the pain as an ache, cramp, numbness or a sense of fatigue. As in much of medicine the word is derived from Latin: claudicare "to limp."

Your chiropractor will look for decreased pulses in the ankle and foot, and for other signs like loss of hair and shiny skin in the lower leg.

The cause? You guessed it, usually smoking, particularly if it is accompanied by a poor diet, high in unhealthy fats. This fatal combination causes a blockage in the artery that runs to the leg.

Treatment

• Since smoking reduces the blood oxygen by about 20%, stopping smoking immediately makes significantly more oxygen available. As a result the pain only begins after a much longer distance.

• A careful assessment of your blood fats is immediately important. A radical change of diet is usually, but not always called for. Some facts about healthy fats
  
  
• An assessment of diabetes and high blood pressure, which may contribute and must be appropriately treated.

• Regular exercise (within the limit of the pain) develops alternative blood paths.

• If all the above fail, a vascular surgeon will either stretch the offending artery with a balloon, fit a stent or perform a bypass to reduce the pain during exercise.

Male smokers over 50 are the most common victims. It’s because of conditions like this that smokers typically lose the last ten years of their lives. Just about the time they retire! Hint, hint!

The Ilio-tibial band

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