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The Elusive and Rare Pinched Nerve

By now you know that chiropractic is primarily concerned with the integrity of your nervous system. Like an electrician, we’re interested in how well the “circuits” of your nervous system are performing. Since the moving bones of your spine and the discs that separate and connect them are often involved, we focus here.

Two broad types of nerve tissue involvement are found.

The most common is referred to as a facilitative lesion. That’s a technical way of saying an irritated nerve. Think of it as an intermittent short circuit. It’s irritating! Here, spinal bones and adjacent soft tissues rub, chafe, stretch, twist or irritate delicate nerve tissue, affecting how nerve communications are transmitted either to or from the brain. These changes produce a variety of responses in organs and tissues distant from the spine.

The least common, believe it or not, is the pinched nerve. Also called a “compressive lesion,” this is the classic, hard bone on a soft nerve model. While easy to understand, as a practical matter, it’s relatively rare. Numbness and tingling are often present, but not always.

In either case, the chiropractic approach is to help normalize the relationships between the bones, discs and nerves. With restored positional and functional integrity, symptoms usually subside and health can return.

When patients say they have a pinched nerve, we know what they mean. The good news is, regardless of what you call it, we have an unusually high success rate without relying on drugs or surgery.