Nerve Injuries: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment Approaches

Can individuals with nerve injuries incorporate non-surgical treatments to reduce pain sensations and restore motor function to their bodies?

Introduction

The human body is a complex machine of nerves, bones, organs, tissues, and muscles that help the individual be mobile, flexible, and stable during various activities without pain and discomfort. However, when numerous factors start to hurt the body, it can lead to multiple overlapping risk profiles that can affect the body’s extremities and nerve injuries. Dealing with nerve injuries can lead to referred pain in the musculoskeletal system, and many people think it is muscle pain instead of nerve injury. When that happens, many individuals will begin to seek treatment to reduce not only the symptoms of nerve injuries but also reduce the pain associated with the nerves. In today’s article, we will look at what causes nerve injuries and how non-surgical treatments like chiropractic care and acupuncture can help with reducing the overlapping symptoms of nerve injuries and provide relief to the body. We discuss with certified medical providers who inform our patients about how nerve injuries can impact the musculoskeletal system. While asking informed questions to our associated medical providers, we advise patients to incorporate non-surgical treatments like chiropractic care and acupuncture to restore motor function to the body. Dr. Alex Jimenez, D.C., encompasses this information as an academic service. Disclaimer.

What Causes Nerve Injuries?

Do you constantly feel tingling or numbness in your legs, arms, feet, and hands? Do your muscles feel so weak that holding objects seems difficult? Or do you feel pain in your extremities, making it difficult to do everyday tasks? The body has trillions of nerves that branch out from the central nervous system and are intertwined with the muscles, tissues, and organs for motor-sensory function. Traumatic injuries, accidents, and normal environmental factors impact the nerves and cause overlapping risk profiles. More often than not, many individuals deal with non-mechanical and mechanical nerve injuries that can occur to the body. With nerve injuries, many individuals can feel various symptoms depending on the severity. Neuropraxia, a moderate form of nerve injury, causes nerve compression in the upper and lower extremities that causes motor dysfunction. (Carballo Cuello & De Jesus, 2024)

Additionally, neuropraxia can lead to functional impairment to the motor-sensory dysfunction that disrupts the peripheral nervous system, signaling this blocks nerve conduction and transient weakness or paresthesia. (Biso & Munakomi, 2024) When this happens, many individuals dealing with peripheral nerve injury that is associated with neuropraxia can experience structural and functional impairment to the sensory-motor skills in the extremities, which leads to physical disability and neuropathic pain, thus affecting a person’s quality of life. (Lopes et al., 2022) Many individuals dealing with nerve injuries can have various recovery periods depending on the severity. Many people often think they are dealing with musculoskeletal pain in their neck, shoulders, back, and extremities, but it is associated with nerve injury. When this happens, many individuals can seek out treatment to reduce the pain-like symptoms from nerve injuries.

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Non-Surgical Treatments For Nerve Injuries

When it comes to treating nerve injuries, it depends on the severity of the symptoms they cause. Surgical options are recommended to restore motor-sensory function if severe mechanical factors cause nerve injury. However, many individuals will opt out of surgical treatments due to their high cost and will often take over-the-counter medication to ease the pain. However, if the nerve injury is non-mechanical, many individuals can seek non-surgical treatments to reduce the nerve injury affecting the musculoskeletal system. Many non-surgical treatments are preferable to many people because they are cost-effective and can ultimately enhance a person’s care and improve their recovery outcome. (El Melhat et al., 2024) Non-surgical treatments can come in many forms, from chiropractic care to acupuncture, to help reduce the effects of non-mechanical nerve injuries and help restore the sensory-motor function of the musculoskeletal system.

Chiropractic Care

Chiropractic care is one of the many non-surgical therapies that use mechanical and manual manipulation of the spine to realign the body and help restore the sensory-motor function to the extremities. With nerve injuries, chiropractic care can help with neural mobilization to release trapped nerves in the affected muscle areas, thus reducing pain-like symptoms of tingling sensations. (Jefferson-Falardeau & Houle, 2019) Additionally, chiropractic care can help increase ROM (range of motion) in the extremities and reduce numbing and tingling sensations.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture is another non-surgical treatment that can also help reduce non-mechanical nerve injuries to the body. When a professional acupuncturist uses small, thin needles at different pressure points to rewire the neuron signaling and restore the body’s energy flow, acupuncture can help improve the clinical efficacy of nerve pain intensity and help enhance the person’s quality of life. (Li et al., 2023) Additionally, acupuncture can help improve nerve injury’s emotional and cognitive function and can be combined with other non-surgical treatments. (Jang et al., 2021) When it comes to reducing pain-like symptoms correlated with nerve injury, non-surgical treatments can provide the relief many individuals seek and lead to a happier, healthier life.

References

Biso, G., & Munakomi, S. (2024). Neuroanatomy, Neurapraxia. In StatPearls. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32491678

Carballo Cuello, C. M., & De Jesus, O. (2024). Neurapraxia. In StatPearls. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32809336

El Melhat, A. M., Youssef, A. S. A., Zebdawi, M. R., Hafez, M. A., Khalil, L. H., & Harrison, D. E. (2024). Non-Surgical Approaches to the Management of Lumbar Disc Herniation Associated with Radiculopathy: A Narrative Review. J Clin Med, 13(4). doi.org/10.3390/jcm13040974

Jang, J. H., Song, E. M., Do, Y. H., Ahn, S., Oh, J. Y., Hwang, T. Y., Ryu, Y., Jeon, S., Song, M. Y., & Park, H. J. (2021). Acupuncture alleviates chronic pain and comorbid conditions in a mouse model of neuropathic pain: the involvement of DNA methylation in the prefrontal cortex. Pain, 162(2), 514-530. doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002031

Jefferson-Falardeau, J., & Houle, S. (2019). Chiropractic Management of a Patient With Radial Nerve Entrapment Symptoms: A Case Study. J Chiropr Med, 18(4), 327-334. doi.org/10.1016/j.jcm.2019.07.003

Li, X., Liu, Y., Jing, Z., Fan, B., Pan, W., Mao, S., & Han, Y. (2023). Effects of acupuncture therapy in diabetic neuropathic pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Complement Ther Med, 78, 102992. doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2023.102992

Lopes, B., Sousa, P., Alvites, R., Branquinho, M., Sousa, A. C., Mendonca, C., Atayde, L. M., Luis, A. L., Varejao, A. S. P., & Mauricio, A. C. (2022). Peripheral Nerve Injury Treatments and Advances: One Health Perspective. Int J Mol Sci, 23(2). doi.org/10.3390/ijms23020918

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