If you are experiencing a chronic back pain problem but you don’t remember doing anything to injure your back, you may be surprised to find that you are actually dealing with an injury in your feet, ankles, or legs, rather than your back itself. While it’s not uncommon for back injuries to cause pain that travels down to your legs and feet, the reverse can be true as well.



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How could this be? First, it’s important to keep in mind the great extent of interconnection that goes on in the human body. Without an in-depth understanding of human anatomy, it can be difficult to understand where certain bone and muscle groups interconnect. The source of mystery pains can often result from problems at these interconnections or injuries that affect the interconnections.

Of course, even without considering these interconnections, it can sometimes be very difficult to isolate the source of a pain. When you are feeling pain, especially a radiating kind of pain, it can be tough to determine if one spot is the source or what hurts the most. If you’ve ever had tooth pain, you can probably understand how complicated this can sometimes be. The mouth is a good example of this phenomenon because the teeth are so closely aligned that it can be almost impossible to know for sure which tooth is causing your pain until a dentist carefully examines you. Back pain can present a similar issue, especially when the pain manifests itself in other parts of the body.



A common cause of foot, ankle, or leg pain that is misdiagnosed as a back problem occurs when an injury to the leg has caused a patient to change their gait. When you favor one leg over the other, you can cause your pelvis and back to undergo an unusual amount of strain as your other bone and muscle groups work to accommodate the change in your walking pattern. Especially in situations of old injury—where you may not even be aware that you’ve picked up a limp, or you’re no longer feeling pain at the injury site—it can be easy for back pain to seem to come on suddenly and without apparent cause.

In these situations, old foot and ankle injuries can be treated through exercises that will help you work out points where your joints or muscles may have healed improperly. Regenerative therapies, where your own cells are used to help spur healing and the growth of new tissue, have also been used to treat both chronic and acute injuries. Dr. Solomon Kamson of the Spine Institute Northwest is one physician who has used regenerative medicine to help treat problems with the spine as well as joint damage.