Discomfort or pain in the legs may range from intense sensations to dull aches. It may disappear after a short period or may prolong. The causes and types of pain may vary. People worried about leg pain may come up with the question, does stress cause leg pain? The answer to this question is unclear, as leg pain is not a very common symptom of stress, but stress may lead to leg pain.
How does stress cause leg pain?
If we look into how this works, people with high-stress levels develop muscle tension. This tension over long periods may leave the legs achy, leading to leg pain. Stress can also cause soreness and tightness of muscles leading to pain. Although not very clear, the connection between stress and leg pain is real. It may not affect everyone with stress, but for some, stress significantly impacts a person’s legs.
Is leg pain caused by stress dangerous to health?
When stress is the main cause of leg pain, there is believed to be no danger to the person’s health. Leg pain tends to respond to how your body is experiencing stress merely. You might or might not need a doctor or long therapies for the leg pain that stress causes; remedies can work in such cases.
Remedies for leg pain caused by stress
It is helpful to be more aware of how to reduce your stress and anxiety to reduce anything that they lead to. Let’s see how you can reduce such leg pains.
1. Keep yourself distracted:
Leg pain caused by stress may follow a common pattern of negative thoughts. In such cases keeping yourself distracted from what causes stress will help reduce the leg pain. It may require distractions that will consume your senses, i.e., calling a friend or starting doing your favorite chore.
2. Maintain your CO2 balance
Hyperventilation may be a common result of stress. This occurs when your oxygen to carbon dioxide balance is not correct. This condition may also lead to leg cramping. To avoid this, you need to slow down you’re inhaling and exhaling rate. You are taking deep belly-breaths help to reduce a person’s breathing rate.
3. Lay down in a comfortable position
Closing your eyes and lying down can help remove some physical stress, improving your leg pain. Dozing off also helps relax your stress. Nothing can be a permanent fix to your leg pain because stress is not something necessarily operable. Hence, you may adopt any remedy that rings to relieve leg pain, which may be different for different people.
However, if you still experience leg pain, it is better to get an appointment with a board-certified vascular surgeon / interventional radiologist.
