Shoulder Pain and Arm Numbness

If you are experiencing pain or muscle spasms in your shoulder or upper back areas, then you might have several compounding factors going on at once. There could also be some issues happening in your neck that are contributing to your pain. In this article, we'll discuss some of the more common issues that are related with this type of pain.

To begin this discussion, it would help to go over a bit of the anatomy or physiology involved in this area to make the explanation more clear. Don't worry, you need not have any formal training or education in gross anatomy or anything to understand what we are going to cover.

The neck and shoulder areas are quite interconnected. In fact, muscles that originate in your neck and others that originate in your upper back and shoulder areas insert into the neck and shoulder regions as well. In other words, these areas are connected with muscles and tendons. They are also connected via ligaments, joints and share common vascular components as well. One of the key connections they share is the nerves.

Your spinal cord travels within a tube formed in the spinal bones from the base of your skull to the tailbone region. There are tissues that protect and anchor that spinal cord within the canal to the vertebrae in specific areas. These connections or anchors are located in the neck and tailbone regions. Because of the way this neural network is arranged, nerves that leave the spinal cord in the neck area, extend into your arms and fingers.

It is because of this relationship that can cause symptoms of tingling or numbness to appear in the shoulder area, arm or hands and fingers from a problem or some other issue originating in the neck. The term for this altered sensation is paresthesia. It is just the medical term for the condition of 'pins and needles' that persists due to nerve compression or irritation.

Depending on the various factors of your life, this could arise from physical causes like an injury from a car accident or something from prolonged postural stresses on the job. You can also get this type of nerve compression issues from having your body being in a state of high mental or emotional stress. This causes your body to respond in a 'fight or flight' mechanism that can further spasm muscles and cause your tissues to be stretched further.

There are various ways that you can try to treat such a condition. One of the more conservative methods is with chiropractic care. There are many approaches within chiropractic that can help you address this issue and others relating to nerve system compression or distortion and tension.

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