Shiprock Chiropractic | Numbness and Tingling treated by Kenneth Wingrove Doctor of Chiropractics

KENNETH WINGROVE

CHIROPRACTOR

Do you have numbness, tingling, burning and shooting pain?

These symptoms point to a pinched nerve or sciatica.

Find out why numbness may be even worse than pain when it comes to nerves.

When you pinch a nerve or cause any-kind of nerve compression, the first symptom is very subtle. You will only feel a very slight skin tingle or you may feel slightly more sensitive to the touch on your skin.

But if nerves stay compressed for only a few days you will begin to experience worsening symptoms. First a light tingling, then burning pain and shooting, then a worsening of the tingling sensation that will lead to numbness.

Even though numbness is much more pleasant than tingling and pain it is the worst symptom as far as nerve health.

Symptoms in arms and hands

Is that shoulder or arm pain you cant get rid of really a neck problem?

A pinched nerve in your neck will cause unrelenting achy pain in the shoulder, arm or hand. They are generally easy to treat and respond very well to chiropractic care. It may be caused by a disk in one or a few of the spinal joints in your neck. Sometimes a disk will develop a blister or disk bulge. The blister bubbles out and presses on a nerve and that causes pain that radiates towards your arm.

Other kinds of nerve pain or numbness and tingling in your hand can be caused by nerve compression in the wrist (carpal tunnel syndrome) or nerve compression in the elbow (pronator teres syndrome)

Carpal tunnel syndrome is the direct result of nerve compression in the wrist. Many people who perform repetitive tasks such as typing or writing for long periods, or those who use hand tools that cause vibration like sanders, heavy equipment, or carpentry may experience hand numbness.

Nerve symptoms are very similar and will overlap, as a result of this I have seen many cases of nerve pain or numbness in the hand diagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome when it is was really a neck problem.

Carpal tunnel syndrome can also be caused by vitamin B12 deficiency. This is very common during pregnancy and is often the cause of carpal tunnel symptoms during pregnancy.

Symptoms in legs and foot

Do you have sciatica? It’s simple to fix. But if its really a low back disk problem your ability to walk may be at risk.

Sciatica can be one of several things. True sciatica is when the sciatic nerve is pinched by a muscle in the buttocks area called the piriformis muscle. The sciatic nerve passes right through the middle of the muscle. If the muscle cramps or spams or is working too hard it will pinch the sciatic nerve and cause very sharp pain that shoots into the leg.

Other kinds of nerve pain in the leg and foot can be caused by slipped disks that pinch nerves as they exit the spine. These “slipped disks” are really just disks with small tears inside the disks that allow the jelly-like nucleus to squeeze out and cause nerve compression. There are five disks that can cause low back or nerve pain and each one will cause pain and symptoms in different areas.

There are other cases when nerve pain comes from lower in the leg like around the knee or in the foot. These feel just like nerve pain from the spine except that the symptoms are in a different location.

This is a common ailment of runners, hikers and cyclist as the repeated pressure they put on their feet can cause nerve compression.

Symptoms in the face

Four common cause of numbness on the face that need to be addressed.

Trigeminal Neuralgia

Intense pain and numbness in the face can be caused by compression or pressure on the trigeminal nerve. This nerve goes to half the face from the forehead to the chin. The pain can be constant or come and go. If the condition worsens the pain may turn to numbness. This actually feels better but is considered a worsening of the condition.

Stroke

One of the lesser known symptoms of stroke is numbness. This can happen in some types of stroke. Stroke can also cause muscle weakness in the face arm and leg. Your speech may slur, you may have trouble swallowing, be dizzy or have double vision or blacked out vision. Stroke is an emergency and recovery depends a-lot on prompt treatment. If you have these symptoms get help, call 911.

Transient Ischemic Attack

These symptoms are similar to stroke but are usually short lived, lasting just a few minutes. Transient Ischemic Attack or TIA is when a part of the brain lacks oxygen and shuts down for a period of time. It can cause intense headache as well as stroke like symptoms. You may experience weakness in your face, face droop or facial numbness. If the symptoms last more than a few minutes it should be considered an emergency. However all incidence of TIA should by evaluated by a medical doctor.

Hemiplegic Migraine

A severe type of migraine that occurs with aura (a visual disturbance) that tends to happen in one eye. It can also cause face, arm and leg weakness, tingling in the hand or numbness one side including the face.

These kinds of migraines happen more often if an allergy to food goes undiagnosed. They also tend to be more frequent in families with certain genetic disorders.

Chiropractic Solution

The intense burning and shooting pain that comes with nerve compression is terrible to live with, and often debilitating. While numbness seems less concerning it is actually worse.

A nerve that is a little in trouble will cause tingling and pain. A nerve that is fully compressed and starved of oxygen will cause numbness.

Nerve numbness happens because the nerve is in so much trouble it cant work at all.

It is important to quickly find the cause of nerve compression. Permanent nerve damage only takes few days.

One of the deciding factors for my becoming a chiropractor was watching a dear friend wait longs weeks before having two surgeries to decompress a nerve in his low back.

He never fully recovered the use of his foot and years later walks with a limp and constant foot pain.

Most often nerve compression that causes numbness and other painful symptoms is easily diagnosed and controlled or fixed without surgery.

I used a combination of skills and tools to find the spot the nerve is compressed and relieve the compression.

Talk to Dr. Wingrove