Pinched and damaged nerves can cause excruciating pain that sticks with you wherever you go. Have you been seeking a pain relief solution for this troublesome condition? You’ll likely be relieved to know that chiropractic care is arguably the most effective option for relieving your acute or chronic neuropathy and keeping you pain-free in the future.
Symptoms of a Damaged Nerve
There are multiple types of nerves throughout the human body, including autonomic nerves (which control involuntary functions, such as your heart rate, breathing, and digestion), motor nerves (which communicate between your brain and your muscles), and sensory nerves (which relay information from touch, including pain). With such a complex nervous system, it’s a small wonder that a damaged nerve can produce so many different symptoms.
The most common symptoms of nerve damage (aka “neuropathy”) include acute or chronic pain conditions (which often feel like a burning, tingling, or stabbing sensation). However, damaged nerves can also cause muscle weakness, decrease your range of motion in certain parts of the body, give you headaches or migraines, or even affect your mood in the form of depression or anxiety.
Damage to nerve tissue can also lead you to sweat excessively (a condition known as hyperhidrosis), feel lightheaded at times, or experience spontaneous muscle spasms (a manifestation of a condition called fasciculation). In the most extreme cases, you may even experience some degree of paralysis, whether partial or complete.
What Causes Nerve Pain?
Just as there is a wide variety of symptoms related to nerve damage, there are plenty of causes for the specific symptoms of neuropathic pain itself.
A common way to develop nerve pain is to experience a traumatic physical injury. This can include anything from getting hit on the football field or during a pick-up game shooting hoops to suffering a motor vehicle accident or a slip down your front steps. Physical trauma can potentially cause physical damage to a nerve itself, which results in nerve pain symptoms.
Similarly, damage to your bones following an injury or accident (such as a break or dislocation) can also put pressure on nerves in the affected region. This additional strain can also lead to nerve interference and subsequent pain.
High blood sugar levels (such as in the case of diabetes) can also damage your nerves. According to the CDC, half of all diabetics suffer from some form of nerve damage! These types of nerve issues in the form of diabetic neuropathy may lead to tingling, a sense of weakness, or numbing in parts of the body.
Other medical conditions can also contribute to nerve pain. Some people with HIV experience it, and people who suffer from vascular conditions may also suffer from nerve pain due to having less oxygenated blood. Finally, having too much vitamin B6 or not enough B12 can also exacerbate nerve pain.
How Chiropractic Care Can Help with Nerve Damage
The chiropractic profession is all about examining and treating problems within the musculoskeletal system, with a particular focus on the spinal region (which includes the bones of the spinal column and the nerves of the spinal cord) and the effects that misaligned joints and vertebrae (known as “subluxations”) have on your muscles and your nervous system.
One of the benefits of chiropractic treatments in from Deep Roots is that a skilled chiropractor can discern if a problem in one part of your body (such as shooting pain running down your leg) is actually being caused by a different part of the body (such as a pinched nerve root or sciatic nerve in the hip or buttocks region).
Given how complex the nervous system is, this ability to investigate problems “upstream” or “downstream” of the site where you’re experiencing symptoms can be incredibly helpful.
Apart from physical evaluation and diagnosis, chiropractors are dedicated to using non-invasive care through natural, gentle treatment methods that place an emphasis on the body’s ability to heal itself if given the right correction. That’s why chiropractic care revolves around correcting the aforementioned subluxations so that your body can return to its naturally efficient, self-healing state.
Chiropractic Adjustments
Chiropractic adjustment techniques, such as spinal manipulations, are the most common treatment that a chiropractor does. However, when it comes to nerve pain, these gentle adjustments may be only one of several different methods used to treat the issue.
This isn’t to say that controlled adjustments won’t be effective in finding relief from pain. By using a gentle activator tool to apply quick, controlled, and safe thrusts to the spine, your chiropractor can put your spinal vertebrae back into their natural position and thereby take pressure off of your nerves and muscles.
Chiropractors can also use techniques such as posture adjustments to relieve pressure from your lower back, extremity manipulation to fix your joints to help with nerve pain in your extremities (e.g. knees, hips, wrists, elbows, shoulders), or flexion-distraction to reduce the pressure between discs in your spine and improve both mobility and nerve pain.
Massage and Physiotherapy
Nerve pain doesn’t usually limit itself to the immediate area of nerve damage. As we mentioned before, it can have a “downstream” effect on other parts of the body, resulting in stiff joints, sore muscles, and various forms of pain.
Since chiropractors are all about providing holistic, whole-body care, a specialist may provide different forms of physiotherapy in addition to adjustment-related methods. For instance, a chiropractor may teach you how to avoid poor posture, which puts excess pressure on your spine and joints and thus can make nerve pain worse.
If your nerve damage is inhibiting your natural mobility or muscular control, a chiropractor can also help you with some forms of gentle physical therapy so that you can regain flexibility and strength. Soft tissue manipulation, which involves removing “knots” of tension within your muscles, can also be beneficial for reducing soreness and pain while enhancing your mobility.
At-Home Posture Fixes, Stretches, and Exercises
Lastly, your chiropractor can help you maintain a high quality of life in between appointments through a customized regimen of at-home stretches. These gentle exercises can help reduce your nerve pain as you go about your daily life and potentially prevent other pain-related health issues and future injuries from cropping up.
Depending on the severity of your condition, your chiropractor may give you a set of posture-corrective exercises or mobility stretches to perform for a set amount of time every day. By performing these exercises, you will be able to take charge of your own pain management, support your body’s natural healing process, decrease the risk of injury in the future, and set yourself up for a lifetime of health and wellness.
Contact Deep Roots Chiropractic Health Center to Schedule an Appointment Today
Nerve damage and the pain associated with it can cause pain and discomfort that affects your entire day. If you want to manage your condition in a way that consistently relieves pain, then you need to contact Deep Roots Chiropractic Health Center today to schedule an appointment.
We are dedicated to providing a high level of personalized care and attention that takes a comprehensive approach to neuropathy treatment. Our goal is to alleviate pain, improve your overall well-being, and put you on a path to greater wellness.
