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Showing results for tags 'median nerve'.
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I thought I’d post this, in case anyone has similar symptoms, as it might be helpful. For years, on an off, I had a mild pain along the inner side of my arms when I raised them to the side. I never thought about it much, and imagined it might be a muscle or tendon pain. Then it went away. However, some months ago, it came back more strongly, just on the right side. At its worst, there was a radiating burning pain along the inner side of the upper arm, in the thumb, and around the ring finger. The dull burning pain was strongest on a patch on the front of the shoulder, and all the muscles around the shoulder joint were tender. Feeling along the line of the pain on the arm (which gave strong burning sensations after a delay) gave a line overlying the median nerve. Shooting pains in e.g. fingers are a sign of nerve damage too. After reading posts on this board, I heard about thoracic outlet syndrome (thank you whoever posted them). The very great majority of cases of thoracic outlet syndrome are due to nerve damage, most of the remainder being due to blocked blood flow. The nerves to the arm leave the neck at levels C4-T1, and travel to the arm through a fairly narrow gap under the collar bone. Then the nerves intermingle, rearranging their fibres, in what is known as the brachial plexus which is on the front of the shoulder, before the different nerves travel down the arm. Trapping of the nerve under the collar bone will lead to pain in the brachial plexus, and in the areas supplied by the nerves. In more severe cases it can also lead to paralysis. The symptoms showed that mine was clearly neural. But why was the nerve getting trapped (if that was what was happening)? One reason is that when I sleep on that side, my shoulder tends to crunch forward, squeezing the front of the shoulder. Stopping sleeping on that side helped, but the pain still didn’t go away. Being thin and unmuscular with mobile shoulders I probably hold my shoulders too low, which means the gap between the collar bone and rib is smaller than normal. So my exercises have focussed on trying to lift the outer edge of the shoulder and collar bone, by lifting the outer edge of the shoulder blade. After experimenting, three exercises have been particularly good. (1) One is to try to target the lower trapezius, by shrugging the shoulders up while holding weights (10 kg in each hand – that is just what I had conveniently available). The action is to try and concentrate the lifting from the inner lower part of the shoulder blade, which is made easier by slight squeezing together of the bottom of the shoulder blades, as well as a strong lift to push the tops of the shoulder blades up and out to the side. (2) To target the anterior serratus, by doing mini-pushups against a wall, with elbows close in to the side. (3) The other is to roll the upper and back part of the top cm or two of the shoulder up and backward. It is a very minimal action, and may in fact be lifting the top of the shoulder blade (the acromion?) by targeting the anterior serratus, though I can only feel it in the top of the shoulder. It is a strange minimal lift and roll of the bone just at the top back outer edge of the shoulder – if you roll the whole shoulder it does not help. This one is particularly useful if I’m sitting at a desk and I’ve been holding the arm relaxed while just the wrist is supported on the desk. Generally the pain has gone now, though it can sometimes recur unexpectedly while using my arm. I suspect most of the pain is due to inflammation of the nerve sheath, because the most tender points are along the line of the median nerve and over the brachial plexus, and we expect inflammation and irritation to take time to die down. The other thing, is that if I cant get a comfortable position to lie in at night (lying on my back often irritates the nerve, for reasons I’ve not been able to work out), lying on my good side and closely hugging a pillow in both arms seems to keep the arms in a stable and restful position (I found this advice on a site for Ehlers-Danlos syndrome). It may look as though I’m missing my teddy bear, but it is all for medical reasons. Cheers, Jim.
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