How Pinched Nerves Affect Your Whole Body

Now when we look at your nervous system
and we examine the spine, we often find
that there are other symptoms involved
with their injury. So for instance, if
someone comes in and maybe they’ve
injured the lower part of their neck or
in between their shoulder blades, those
are the nerves that not only affect our
muscles and our neck and our back, but
they also intervate the heart and lungs.
And we might find that that patient has
a history of difficulty breathing. Maybe
they have a hard time respirating, maybe
they have uh exercise induced asthma,
but their lungs just don’t function
normally. And so when a nerve gets
pinched in the spine, it’s not like a
light switch that just suddenly goes
either on 100% or off. Often times the
injury occurs and there’s pressure
placed on that delicate nerve and maybe
they lose 50% of the nerve supply. So
now all of a sudden it becomes difficult
for them to raise their arm or to lift
something off of their desk that
normally would not be a problem. But
because of that pinched nerve, the
muscles are weak. The nerve is affected.
And not only that, but maybe their heart
and lungs are just not functioning
efficiently. We might also have a
patient come in that has a neck injury
in the upper part of the neck, and those
are the nerves that go to the head and
the face. They’ll often feel headaches
or pressure behind the eyes. We might
have another patient come in with a low
back injury. And they’ll find that not
only do they have back pain that
radiates down their hip and leg, but
they may also have trouble with their
digestion or urinary incontinence,
there’s so many different symptoms that
can be involved that relate to the spine
and those delicate nerve fibers. So when
a patient contacts our office and comes
in for a proper spinal evaluation, we
will be checking your spine for these
injuries and talk to the patient about
what we can do to improve their
condition under chiropractic care.