If you are a victim of cervical radiculopathy you should visit a chiropractor to get some pain relief from this condition. At Mauricio Chiropractic, we are here to answer your questions about spine conditions and how chiropractic care can help. Today we’re talking about how cervical radiculopathy chiropractic care can be beneficial to you.
What Is Cervical Radiculopathy?
Cervical radiculopathy happens when the nerve roots located near the cervical vertebrae get compressed. This can cause the nerves to inflame and get damaged. Additionally, besides causing pain, this condition can also radiate the pain out to the shoulders, hands, arms, and neck, causing sensitivity and weakness.
What Causes Cervical Radiculopathy?
The most common cause of cervical radiculopathy in people in the range of age of 20-30 is an injury, for example, a ruptured disc. A ruptured disc can create more pressure to the roots of the nerves, therefore causing this condition.
In people over the age of 50, this condition can be caused by normal degeneration. Arthritis often is a contributor factor to cervical radiculopathy. This type of degeneration can include bone spurs, bulging discs, or thick ligaments, which can cause even more pressure to the nerve root.
How Cervical Radiculopathy Can Affect Function
In the medical field, dysfunction of a spinal nerve root is described as radiculopathy. Like we mentioned before, you can experience it in your neck and back, depending on where the nerve root is located.
Spinal roots run along directly from the spinal cord to the major nerves in your body. Which in turn, branch out to the smaller nerves that send signals to different parts of the body. The cervical nerve routes send all nerve signals between the upper extremities and the spinal cord.
Whenever a cervical nerve root gets injured or pinched, it can’t receive or send nerve signals normally. This broken communication can affect the function and comfort of all nerves served by the pinched nerve root.
Because of this, you may feel symptoms in your fingers, hand, arm, or shoulder. Cervical radiculopathy usually affects one extremity at a time, but you could potentially feel it in more than one.
Cervical Radiculopathy Symptoms
The most common symptom of this condition is pain that runs across the upper back or shoulders. A person with cervical radiculopathy can experience a loss of sensation, issues in the hands, and coordination problems.
Some other symptoms include the feeling of ‘pins and needles’, and tingling or numbness in arms, fingers, or hands.
Cervical Radiculopathy Chiropractic Care
The first thing you need to do when seeking help with this condition is getting an accurate diagnosis. A chiropractor can achieve this by a detailed examination of your symptoms, age, lifestyle, medical history, and any risk factors. All of this information helps to reveal exactly what nerve root needs to be treated.
Subtle, gentle chiropractic adjustments to the cervical spine can relieve cervical radiculopathy symptoms by resolving the underlying cause. For example, a chiropractic adjustment will improve your neck alignment when shifting herniated discs or bones away from nerve tissue, it will then restore normal flow to nerve signals.
Your chiropractor may be able to enhance the effectiveness of adjustment sessions with other treatment techniques that don’t involve surgery. For example, physical therapy exercises can rebuild your weakened muscles or even improve your posture. Cervical traction can also help with joint and spinal disc problems.
Once your cervical radiculopathy is under control, a chiropractor can give you different tips to avoid any further episodes. Your chiropractor can also provide you with a preventative wellness plan that may involve exercises, lifestyle changes to promote a better posture, and regular chiropractic exams to find and correct spinal imbalances.
Chiropractic Care Near You
At Mauricio Chiropractic, we are committed to offering you the best possible cervical radiculopathy chiropractic care. If you are suffering from this condition we highly recommend you schedule an appointment with us. Start your journey towards pain-free living!
We provide advanced spinal correction utilizing “state of the art” chiropractic techniques. Never in the history of chiropractic have we been able to provide the level of help and expertise that now exists. These newer correction methods are even safer, more comfortable and more effective than ever before. As Doctors of Chiropractic,Our Team has years of training and experience in spinal adjustment.