HealthNotes

John White, 70, is an active guy. Retired from the military, police and federal court, and still running his own private investigator business, it’s not in his nature to be sedentary. But worsening back and leg pain had seriously curtailed his ability to maintain an active lifestyle. “I could get up and walk around, but I was limited in how far I could walk,” the Palm Desert resident relates. “I had to cut my exercise routine by about 80 percent.” The culprit was spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the open spaces within the spine, which can put pressure on the spinal cord and the nerves that travel through the spine to the arms and legs. White also had spondylolisthesis (instability of the spine), caused when one vertebra slips forward on another, also narrowing the spinal canal.