Leg Pain Specialist

What causes leg pain?

Harvard Sports Medicine:

Dr. Verma and Dr. Lohr attended Harvard in 2019 to expand their knowledge about Sports Medicine.  At Harvard Sports Medicine a number of causes and treatment approaches for leg pain were discussed. 

Leg pain most often occurs because of damage, overuse, or wear-and-tear of the joints and soft tissues. Fractures are quite common in the legs, and problems like trapped or damaged nerves in your lower back can also cause leg pain.

Sometimes leg pain is due to circulatory problems such as peripheral arterial disease (PAD) or venous insufficiency. These conditions affect the blood flow into your legs, causing pain and other problems like varicose veins.

If you have pain in your leg, it’s important to get an accurate diagnosis of the cause as soon as possible. Circulatory problems might also affect your heart, and there’s a risk you might have a blood clot in your leg, especially if you’ve been inactive recently.

What musculoskeletal conditions most often cause leg pain?

Your knee is the part of your leg most likely to cause pain. Degenerative conditions like post-traumatic arthritis and inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis are common causes of knee pain.

You could get bursitis, which is an inflammation of the bursae that help cushion your joints. Injuries to the knee include meniscus tears, which affect the cartilage in your knee joint, and cruciate ligament tears. The posterior and anterior cruciate ligaments that help you bend your knees are quite often injured during sports activities.

Your ankle could develop arthritis. Sprained ankles are a common injury and can lead to long-term ankle instability if you don’t get the right treatment. 

The Achilles tendon running up the back of your ankle is also vulnerable to injury, so you could get an acute injury like an Achilles tendon rupture, or an overuse injury like Achilles tendonitis.

Muscles in your legs can develop a cramp (charley horse) when they’re dehydrated or overtired, which is an intense but typically short-lived pain. Leg cramps are a common problem in people who play sports and can have a serious impact on your performance as well as being very unpleasant. 

Muscle strains and hamstring damage are also common sports injuries. Shin splints are common in runners, causing inflammation in the soft tissues covering your shins.

Leg pain can also come from nerve damage. Conditions like spinal stenosis, herniated lumbar discs, and piriformis syndrome can cause nerve impingement that can be highly painful. 

Sciatica, for example, is due to pressure on the sciatic nerve that exits your spine and branches off to your legs. It causes shooting pain that travels from your lower back, through your hip and buttocks, and down one leg.

How is leg pain treated?

Finding the cause of your leg pain is key to receiving the right treatment. The team at Integrative Pain Institute has significant expertise in diagnosing the causes of leg pain and has access to cutting-edge diagnostics as well.

Depending on the cause of your leg pain, you might need treatments such as:

• Physical therapy
• Medical management
• Laser therapy
• Massage and soft-tissue therapy
• Ultrasound therapy
• Heat and cold therapy
• Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS)
• Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections
• Stem cell therapy 
• Steroid injections 
• Genicular nerve block with rhizotomy
• Sarapin® injections

If you need help with leg pain, call Integrative Pain Institute today or book an appointment online.