How To Treat A Pinched Nerve Video

Pinched nerves usually occur in the neck, but can lead to pain and muscle spasms throughout the upper back and arm. Learn how to treat a pinched nerve in the neck and stay fit in this sports medicine video.

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Typically between C-6 & C-7
Chronic pain between shoulder blades
Massage may help
May require nerve block procedure
Maintain good posture

About this Author

Russ Paine is a well-known physical therapist with the Roger Clemens Institute at Memorial Hospital. After getting his degree in physical therapy from Texas Women's University, he trained for several years under David Drez, MD, a renowned surgeon and sports medicine specialist. He has been a rehab consultant for the Houston Rockets, Houston Astros and NASA. He has given hundreds of presentations in his career in the US and abroad, and has published many chapters in text books and papers in peer review journals.

RUSS PAINE: So today, we're talking about a pinched nerve in your neck and what can cause that particular problem. Actually, it's not like you think like a nerve is being actually pinched by some muscle. It typically comes from your disk area. So C6-7 is typically where you have disk problems. The C7 disk, our spinal process is here, the bone that sticks out. So between C6 and C7 is typically where you have nerve problems resulting from disks that can cause you to have pinched-nerve type symptoms. As you can see here is your cervical radiculopathy. You can see that the nerves travel down in between your shoulder blades and all the way down the back of your arm and around your hand. So having pain in between your shoulder blades, with chronic pain with really serious muscle spasms all the time, you need to get that checked out because it could be an indication of a cervical disk. Even though you don't have arm pain all the way down your arm, a pinched nerve or a disk that is compressing all the nerves could actually cause you to have chronic muscle spasms in this area. So treatment for this, sometimes massage and myofascial-type of releases are helpful, but sometimes they're temporary relief. Sometimes, people will have to undergo a nerve block, which is done in an imaging center by an anesthesiologist that injects the actual disk area or the nerve root to decompress--not to decompress but to reduce the pain that is causing the nerve to contract the muscle. So the muscle is in spasm but the problem is up here. Now, another thing that is important is to have good postural stability, so we have a normal cervical curve and thoracic curve. So sometimes, people have a flat neck here. So we want them to maintain a more normal curve, and we can do that by strengthening the muscles in between the shoulder blades and stretching out the muscles in the front. A pinch nerve is a debilitating problem for some people. I think an accurate diagnosis is a key to get results for this.

How to Treat a Pinched Nerve Video

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