A NOTE FROM DR. ALTMAN

“Numbness, burning, tingling, pins and needles”: these symptoms, often experienced alone or in combination, are suggestive of conditions affecting the peripheral nerves in our arm. These peripheral nerves arise from the spinal cord in the neck. They carry electrical signals down the arm into the muscles, causing contraction and movement of our body parts. They also carry sensory fibers, allowing us to feel and appreciate pain, pressure or temperature differences. If these nerve are compromised in any way, either externally by being compressed much like a kinked hose; or internally, like a clogged hose, the electrical signals are diminished giving rise to numbness or weakness or both.

Difficulty in picking up objects or frequently dropping objects may be due to diminished sensation in our fingertips. Fumbling when trying to manipulate objects in your hand, or the loss of coordination and dexterity compromising your fine motor skills can be the result of compression of a nerve.

Waking up at night and shaking your hands in order to recover feeling, or doing the same during the day when grasping the steering wheel, may be the earliest signs of carpal tunnel syndrome, which is the single most common nerve compression syndrome of the arm. Many things can cause the nerves to be compressed including injuries and broken bones, swelling around the nerves, large muscles pushing on the nerves, and anatomic variations of the hand and upper limb. Neck, shoulder, elbow and wrist arthritis can also give rise to peripheral nerve compression syndromes which can result in numbness.

An in-depth understanding of all the working parts of the entire upper arm, including all the nerves, is essential to proper diagnosis and treatment of neuropathy.

OTHER COMMON SYMPTOMS