Originating from Greek, the term stenosis means a choking. Lumbar spinal stenosis occurs when spinal nerve roots in the lower back are compressed or choked producing painful symptoms. Along with the pain comes symptoms of weakness or numbness along with a tingling sensation that often radiates from the lower back, into the buttocks and down through your legs. These symptoms are usually felt more strongly with activity.

If spinal stenosis is affecting your neck, it can be much more dangerous. By compressing the spinal cord itself, this possibly leads to major body weakness or in a worst case scenario paralysis. Seeing as the spinal cord is not present in the lumbar spine, paralysis is virtually impossible from lumbar spinal stenosis.

In most cases the spinal stenosis symptoms consist of pain that radiates into your legs while walking. This pain is usually relieved when sitting, although in some rare cases, the spinal stenosis pain is a severe and persistent disabling pain that causes weakness in the legs.

Spinal stenosis will usually become persistent in the 5th decade of life, as spinal stenosis is related to the degeneration of the spine. Most symptoms of spinal stenosis will start to appear at around the age of 60, although traumatic back injury can aid in the development of spinal stenosis. Seeing as most spinal stenosis cases only affect the amount of activity one can enjoy, there is no true medical emergency. It is up to the patient to decide when enough is enough and it is time to seek treatment to live a more active lifestyle.

Supporting the structure of the body, the vertebral column in the spine and sacrum (at the bottom of the spine) act like a stack of blocks. These bony structures each have additional bony attachments. The Bony attachments help to stabilize the and also protect the spinal cord and nerves that pass downward from the brain to the organs, muscles and sensory structures of the body. Each spinal segment consists of a vertebral body and its attachments, along with the disc between the adjacent vertebrae.

Throughout the entire length of the spine there is a large central canal that the spinal cord descends through. At each level there are holes in the side of this canal that allow for the spinal nerves to emerge. The spinal cord stops at the upper part of the low back, and below that the tiny contained nerve rootlets descend loosely splayed out - like a horse's tail - and are protectively enclosed in a long sack. All central nerve structures are protected further by membranes, with a tough outer membrane.

There are a variety of ways that spinal stenosis can occur. Spinal stenosis will occur in the low back (lumbar spine) approximately seventy five percent of the time. When spinal stenosis occurs in the low back it is termed as lumbar spinal stenosis and is commonly referred to as sciatica. Only a doctor or trained professional should advise you any further about possible health issues that you may have.