Hey, El Paso!

This is Dr. David with El Paso Manual Physical Therapy.

I wanted to talk to y’all about pinched nerves that might be coming off of your neck.

There are many symptoms associated with this.

Besides the stiffness in the neck, and numbness and tingling that can go down all the way to the fingertips (it usually doesn’t go that far).

It usually will just go down the arm into the elbow, but we do see cases very frequently that go down into the hand.

Sometimes there’s nothing in the arm or shoulder, it just presents as hand pain or weakness, or numbness and tingling.

We see problems that are originating up in the neck.

I’m going to show you some pictures as to why that happens and see how the body really is all connected.

You always hear the old cliché, “It’s all connected.”  …..and it really is.

If you look at the neck, and the nervous system, especially in this area, there are these yellow strings that are coming off the neck, those are the nerves that exit the spine in the neck and they go down all the way.

All around the arm, and all the way down into the fingertips.

So if you’ve got a problem way up here, like a herniated disc, or arthritis, or something like that; stenosis is another one.

Something that’s causing some pressure on the neck, it can pinch the nerve way up here, cause stiffness and pain up here, and because these nerves go into the shoulder it can present as a problem here in the shoulder or anywhere down the arm near the elbow all the way to the fingertips.

What many people do is, think I need surgery for this.

In fact, a cervical disc bulge surgery where they cut off the disc is one of the most common surgeries that is done in the neck.

We have to ask the question,

“What causes that disc bulge in the first place?”

That’s something that we treat here at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy.

We treat the root of the problem.

We want to know what kinds of forces where going on at the neck to set you up to have that disc bulge, because those disc bulges can be addressed so that they are not causing a problem that goes down into the shoulder and hands.

So, if you’ve got some sort of disc problem in the neck, and it’s causing you pain down the arm, into the shoulder, elbow, or into the hand, talk to somebody who’s a specialist at treating this without surgery.

They might be able to make a huge difference in your life so that you can avoid surgeries.

And of course, get off any pain medications that you might already be taking right now to address this problem.

If you have any questions on this, please reach out to us.

We’re happy to help.

Have a wonderful day.