Nerves Need to Move!
Nerve pain, and even nerves in general can be a little scary for people. People’s knowledge of nerve pain typically starts and ends with their story of a friend or relative who had nerve pain and ended up needing surgery for their “pinched nerve”. The good news is: there’s a lot that we can do to treat nerve-related pain that doesn’t involve surgery! Let’s talk about nerves, why they can get irritated, and what to do about it.
Nerves are Tough.
It’s easy to think of nerves as flimsy little electrical cords that run all throughout our bodies that can be disturbed by the slightest amount of pressure. Fortunately, that’s not the case at all! Nerves are made of a lot of dense, very tough tissues that can handle compression, stretch, and torsion very well.
If you straighten your elbow from a fully bent position, one of the nerves in your arm has to stretch almost 20% longer than its resting length! If you take your thumb and push it down in the area on the palm side of your hand right where your wrist joint is, you’re significantly compressing a part of that same nerve. Odds are, as long as you’re not having an issue with that particular nerve, neither of those things are really painful, and you’re certainly not doing any damage to the nerve.
Now, think about the famous sciatic nerve. If you’re reading this blog post while sitting down, your body weight from your hips up to your head is pushing down on the sciatic nerves in each of your legs. And again, if you’re not having any issues with those nerves, they tolerate that compression just fine!
What Keeps Nerves Healthy?
Three things are important to think about when talking about how to keep nerves happy and healthy:
Space
Movement
Blood
Space: Despite the fact that nerves can tolerate a significant amount of compression, they still do need adequate space. This doesn’t mean that nothing can touch them. In fact, they’re always rubbing up against and pushing on all of the surrounding tissues in your body. But, if their passageway through the body gets compressed enough for a long amount of time, they start to have problems. An example of this is when you’ve woken up one night and your ring and pinky fingers are numb and/or tingly. Your elbow was probably bent in a position where a specific nerve was compressed for too long. You can usually shake your arm out and in a matter of minutes the numbness/tingling goes away.
Movement: Not only CAN nerves move, they NEED to and LIKE to move! Movement keeps all of the necessary chemicals moving through the nerves so that they can send signals like they’re supposed to. Movement also helps to maintain blood flow to the nerve. And this is important because the third thing nerves need is…
Blood: Like most tissues in the body, nerves need good blood flow to function properly. Blood flow, along with movement, keeps the chemicals inside of the nerve flowing appropriately, and a lack of oxygen coming from your blood can lead to an acidic environment to develop around the nerve. Nerves don't like that.
How to Keep Nerves Happy
This is an incredibly complex topic, but one thing that is certainly true is that exercise is essential for keeping nerves happy. Why? Because exercise gets your nerves moving, AND exercise gets your heart pumping more blood to all of the tissues in your body, nerves included! That’s often why a good recommendation for almost all types of nerve irritation include a nice walk! Stretching and mobility drills are also a great way to maintain sufficient space around your nerves so they’re not feeling crowded or compressed. Good diet and good sleep also have enormous influences on nerve health, and bad habits in these domains can lead to nerves that are more likely to get irritated.
Irritated Nerves
Unfortunately, if space, movement, and/or blood flow aren’t where they need to be for a nerve, it can get irritated. Most often, this means that it becomes “sensitized”, where small things that didn’t irritate it before now cause problems. These problems can be pain, tingling, numbness, and in some more significant cases, weakness of the muscles that the nerve helps to activate. Treatment for this typically involves getting enough space, movement, and blood flow to the nerve so that it can “de-sensitize”. This is where physical therapists shine, because we figure out where the nerve needs more space, what the right movements are for the nerve, and get more blood flow to the area in a safe and effective way. In some very severe cases, surgery can be necessary, but we want you to know that those cases are rare, and surgery is almost always a last resort, not the first answer. If you have more questions, or are dealing with some cranky nerves yourself, reach out to us! We’d love to help you get those nerves happy and healthy again!
- Grant Banks, DPT
Thanks to Evidence in Motion and Adriaan Louw for the “Space, Movement, Blood” framework and training in the management of these conditions.
