A lower limb length inequality (LLLI) is a factor in the case of numbness in the skin on the outside of this man’s thigh. (Let’s call him Patrick.) Doing a quick check visually, there is a significant difference between the length of his legs, so he bought one of the little inexpensive heel lifts you’ll find in my Amazon store and put it in his right shoe. He said that a doctor had noticed this difference 25-30 years ago, but he hadn’t done anything about it.

In my opinion, this is the cause of Patrick’s back problem for which he has had four surgeries. Go to the SEARCH box on the right here to see several posts I’ve already written about this condition. I won’t review it again here except to say that when the pelvis in not level it can cause problems with muscles all over the body, including the inner pelvis where I suspected the real cause of numbness lay in this patient. Future failure to keep the pelvis level can cause recurring symptoms. According to Drs. Travel and Simons, once Trigger Points have developed, even an eighth of an inch difference in leg length can be a perpetuating factor for chronic pain.

To check for what the medical doctors had determined to be the cause of Patrick’s pain, I treated the muscles of the back first, 1) going deep into the little rotators and extensors on either side of the spine that can cause compression of the discs as well as 2) the longer erector muscles in the lumbar section of his back. Of course I also checked the little quadratus lumborum that levels the hip and is often the cause of low back pain and it’s associated iliolumbar ligament. (I have several posts about this too so, again, I won’t repeat here.) Both sets of muscles were tight and tender with referrals from a Trigger Point at L3, but neither reproduced the pain and numbness he was experiencing in his thigh. Releasing tension in these muscles using Neuromuscular Therapy is essential to prevent recurrence of the the disc compression.

Next I went to the sacroiliac joint and gluteal muscles that commonly refer pain into the thigh and and the piriformis that not only refers downward, but can also cause sciatic nerve entrapment.

The next post goes into other possible causes of his pain and starts to discuss the reason for the numbness.