Arm Pain and Tingling

Do You Have Arm Pain or Tingling in Your Arm and Hand? Read on …

Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Arm pain is common and affects many people. Pain in the arm can be a dull ache but sometimes its described as a tingling sensation. Or it can be a combination of a dull ache and tingling.

Tingling can be felt in the forearm, wrist, hand, and fingers. One of the main ways the most people handle arm pain and tingling is with painkillers and anti-inflammatories. My concern with this form of treatment is that these medications will never, ever, correct the underlying cause of the problem. And in many cases, the pain and tingling in the arm and hand keeps persisting even while people take these sorts of medications. Which begs the question, “Are these medications really helping?”

When someone comes to my office with arm pain or tingling in the arm or hand what I look for as a chiropractor is what’s causing the pain and tingling. And on of the key areas we exam is the neck region. What we know is that the nerves that feed into the arm and the hand originate from the mid and lower neck region (cervical spine). Many doctors and therapists fail to assess or address the neck in patients with arm pain and tingling. Sometimes arm pain and tingling is associated and occurs at the same time as neck pain but sometimes there can be no neck pain and only arm pain.

Other areas we exam would be the shoulder region, the elbow, and the wrist, because the neck nerves travel from the neck through the front of the shoulder area, down the arm to the elbow region, into the forearm and through the wrist until they reach the fingers.

A chiropractor will examine the alignment of the cervical spine and determine if the nerves are being pressured, stressed, or interfered within anyway. The most common cause of nerve interference in the neck is a misalignment of the spine (aka vertebral subluxations).

Spinal misalignments can tension and stress the spinal cord and the nerves that stem from the spinal cord and can cause arm pain and tingling that can reach all the way down to the finger tips. Another problem with spinal misalignments is that they remain undetected and uncorrected, they can lead to form arthritis on the spinal joints and discs. When the arthritis progresses and gets worse it can form advances spurs that reach into the openings where the spinal nerves emerge from. This too can cause cause pressure and interference on the nerves that often leads to arm pain and tingling.

A chiropractor will exam the function and the structure of the spine to determine where the spinal misalignments (subluxations) are and how this is relating the the arm pain and neck pain. Also, a key component of a chiropractic assessment is a spinal xray. A spinal xray will help confirm the presence of spinal misalignments and the presence of any arthritis. As well, the xray, in conjunction with the exam tests, will give the chiropractor a framework for developing a plan to correct the spinal condition (subluxations) that is causing the arm pain and the tingling.

We have seen many people benefit from arm pain and tingling with chiropractic care. The key is to get started as soon as you develop arm pain and tingling symptoms. The longer you wait to get examined and treated for arm pain and tingling, the longer it may take to correct the problem.

Chiropractic care can be an effective way of getting rid of arm pain and hand tingling. If you have arm pain and tingling in your arm or hand, do not wait to see it get worse. Check in with a chiropractor and see what chiropractic can do for you.

If you are suffering of:

  • Arm pain
  • Elbow pain
  • Shoulder pain
  • Neck pain
  • Arm tingling
  • Hand/wrist/finger tingling

then consider seeing a chiropractor for a thorough spinal exam to determine what is causing your arm pain and tingling.  Once the chiropractor completes the examination and determines that chiropractic can help, you will get a corrective care plan that aims at relieving your immediate pain as well as correcting the underlying problem.