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By Rachael Bird, Myotherapist Ever experienced a ‘burny’ pain, sharp or shooty sensations, or that strange mix of numbness, weakness, and pins & needles—and wondered what’s actually causing it? These are all common signs of nerve-related pain. What causes nerve pain? Well there are a number of reasons; but here are some possibilities:
Where is nerve pain felt? Nerve pain can range from mild to severe and can show up in many areas of the body. Common regions include:
How does it spread (referral patterns)? Upper body (upper limbs):
Common nerve-related patterns Upper body:
Lower body:
Knee-specific nerve pain:
What can you do? Depending on what happened it is advisable to see your Doctor if this happened after an injury, fall, or if the pain is severe (if intense severe/ OR it affects Groin area/Bladder and or numbness in ‘saddle zone’- proceed to emergency care for further help) If it is not severe, or ongoing: You can always come and see us as Myotherapists or our Osteo for further help. We are quite well versed in most common nerve pain, and could offer some relief, or even resolve your pain. It’s important to understand that nerve pain is a gradual resolve due to its slow recovery rate. It would all depend on your symptoms, and how your body recovers. Additional self care: Again depending on severity, your best step is to stop what you are doing that caused this or is making it aggravated, drink some water, use a heat pack and seek medical assistance for if you need additional pain relief (medication). Try nice gentle stretching when its calmed down a little, it's very important not to push it. Try some walking, but not running/hiking as that can aggravate your symptoms and set 3-7 days of recovery depending on pain levels. For upper body - Avoid your head sticking forward past your shoulders and any overhead actions that tense up the base of the neck/upper shoulders areas (this still includes no running) For lower body - Avoid lifting especially when it's fresh, just keep the areas relaxed and rest them. DO NOT poke the area when it's angry. Use gentle massage, or work around the area to help soften the tension. How Myotherapy can help We can help by assessing the areas affected and depending on the initial assessment, we can provide some relief and make a plan to help get you back on track. We provide different technique options depending on your symptoms and presentation. These can include:
In some cases we can also refer you in the right direction for further assistance (e.g. when severe, or with specific type of symptoms). By Ethan Farr, Sports Myotherapist & Exercise Scientist This is a bit of a loaded question. There are a lot of factors that contribute to when you are able to get back to exercise post injury; the severity of injury, what kind of injury, your strength/conditioning pre injury and the kind of training you do just to name a few. Strictly speaking you are able to get back into the gym while injured as long as you are training around said injury and finding no increase in pain or swelling the next day e.g. an injured leg you can still train upper body, however for training the injury there are 3 general phases of healing: the inflammatory phase, the proliferative phase and the remodelling phase.
What do these stages mean for you and getting back to the gym? Realistically these stages are not quite set in stone as you may be able to tell as there is quite a large range in timeframe that these stages can occur in but these stages aid in creating a general guide to what kinds of exercise should be programmed into your rehabilitation pathway. Generally within those first 3-7 days you should be focusing on reducing inflammation and pain so exercise isn’t your main concern at this point. However if you must, the exercise you should be doing generally consists of non-weight bearing exercise going through the range of motion of the injured site without increase in pain. Between days 4-21 you are looking at introducing more weight bearing exercises for things like ankle sprains this could be a little as walking for shoulders you could be looking at light band work trying to use the full range of motion of the joint with some resistance. In this stage a VAS pain scale can be used to guide your movements and exercise programming a VAS pain scale in this case would be a pain rating from 0 being no pain at all to 10 being incredibly painful, if the exercise you’re doing increases pain to the 7-10 ranges then it is not suitable for rehabilitation and could be doing more damage than good (No pain no gain need not apply to the rehabilitation pathway in this sense). The last stage of healing is a long lasting stage most people may not even realise they’re still in the process of healing when they’re in this stage, it can present as something as small as having a reduced ability to balance on one leg compared to the other or even just being a little apprehensive in doing certain movements. At this stage you are looking to incorporate increased challenge to the exercises programmed you are looking at including your bigger compound movements or increasing instability during the exercises, in this stage exercises will generally be guided by your daily life activity needs e.g. working a trade vs office work will have very different needs and if you play sport your exercises can be tailored to your sports needs. Getting back to the gym feeling better then you felt pre-injury is what I love about myotherapy and fitness so if you find all of this too complicated to follow but still want to get back to top shape after an injury, I would love to have the chance to guide your rehabilitation pathway and get you back to peak performance. Book with me on a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday. Simple Wellness Myotherapy is located at Shop 12B/150 Kelletts Rd, Rowville VIC 3178. Additionally, you can contact us on (03) 8204 0970 to arrange an appointment today. |
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