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When nerves become ‘pinched’, injury, spasm, and inflammation of the surrounding muscles causes the nerve to become compressed, resulting in pain. This begins a cycle.
The term “pinched nerve” is commonly used to describe the pain associated with a variety of conditions from subluxations, to tunnel syndromes to disc problems.
Most of the time a pinched nerve is an irritated or inflamed nerve but the nerve itself is not actually pinched. Many times when spinal joint move out of its normal alignment, joints, ligaments and muscles stop functioning properly causing irritation to the area local nerve roots, thus a “pinched nerve”. The condition described is called a “subluxation”. This is the specialty of the doctor of chiropractic.
There are instances when nerves do become ‘pinched’, such as in carpal tunnel syndrome, sciatica and thoracic outlet syndrome. In these cases the nerves become compressed or “pinched”, resulting in pain, spasm or inflammation of the surrounding muscles and connective tissue results causing a cycle of dysfunction.
