Pinched Nerves

What Is a Pinched Nerve?

A pinched nerve is simply a nerve that has become compressed or irritated. When this occurs, it can interfere with sensation and movement signaling between the brain and body. This can lead to incomplete, altered, or missing sensations, such as distorted pain perception and phantom limb syndrome, a condition in which an amputee continues to experience sensations from a limb that is no longer present. It can also make it challenging to maintain balance, walk, or move the limbs.

How Does a Pinched Nerve Feel?

According to our chiropractor for pinched nerves, once pinched nerves are most common in the lower back and spine, a pinched nerve can affect anywhere from these points to the toes and fingers, respectively. It is often painful when a nerve is irritated, but chiropractic for pinched nerve patients can feel numbness, tingling, or even burning sensations in these areas. Our West Suburban Wellness patients frequently report that the pinched nerve makes everyday tasks more challenging to perform.

Common Causes of Pinched Nerves

Since nerves are so widespread, they can have many causes. Although they can be classified as diseases, traumas, or “wear-and-tear” injuries, a wide range of issues can lead to a pinched nerve. Some of the causes of pinched nerves we see here at West Suburban Wellness, more frequently include:

• Osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis
• Sports or Auto accident trauma
• Bulged disc
• Poor workplace ergonomics
• Subluxation

Symptoms of Pinched Nerves

Since nerves relay sensory and motor messages, pinched nerves can cause symptoms affecting sensation and movement. Some of the more common sensory symptoms our patients report to our chiropractor for pinched nerves include “pins-and-needles” tingling, burning, and electrical shock-like sensations. Since the nerves carry information, they transport these painful messages throughout the nerve path, potentially causing shooting sensations as far as the fingers, toes, and other distant body parts.

While nerve-related sensory issues impact our patients’ lives, movement problems stemming from nerve issues limit their daily activities. Pinched nerves don’t just cause weakness. They cause uneven weakness that can lead to unhealthy compensations in movement. Patients with this type of weakness are also at greater risk of injury partly because their mind’s vision of a body equally strong on both sides doesn’t match reality. This mismatch between perception and reality results in putting forth excess effort for movement and

Pinched Nerve Treatment

Following our assessment, we match patients with pinched nerve treatment interventions that can get them the results they need. These are as gentle and minimally invasive as possible. They are also created to match our patients’ habits, inclinations, and personal styles to be more easily integrated into their everyday lives.

Therapeutic Movement

Gentle movement can help ailing nerves regain lost function and experience less pain. Guided exercise is an essential pinched nerve chiropractic treatment. Once our chiropractor has assessed a patient’s movement and created some long-term treatment goals, our trainer develops a therapeutic movement program to meet these goals. Initially, therapeutic movement is performed in our comfortable treatment room under the expert guidance of our trainer. This ensures that all exercises are performed correctly and that they can make any necessary adjustments to the plan as soon as possible.

Strategic Self-Care

Once a patient can independently and safely complete their therapeutic movement program here at West Suburban Wellness, we send them home with a prescription to complete it. In our experience, chiropractic for pinched nerve patients are motivated to learn and complete various self-care strategies at home. These include therapeutic heat treatments, cold application, and rest. Prescribed nutrition is another area in which our patients excel and experience the results of a balanced diet and targeted supplementation.

Our Pinched Nerve Chiropractor Provides Relief

If your compressed nerves make your muscles, joints, and other body parts extremely painful, you have lots of company. Here at West Suburban Wellness see patients like you every day and would love to help you enjoy pain-free and easy movement again. Please give us a call to schedule a consultation or have your questions answered by a pinched nerve chiropractic treatment team member.