Is your neck pain really due to RA or are you vitamin B12 deficient?
Recognizing the symptoms of spinal cord compression can lead to prompt treatment and a more positive prognosis, but what if symptoms of cord compression in the cervical spine are really being caused by an underlying vitamin B12 deficiency? Read more
Learning how to treat spinal stenosis can be difficult enough, and managing the symptoms of pain, tingling, numbness, and weakness that can travel through your spine and extremities is even more frustrating. So what do you do when you’re at work, are trying to be productive, but the nagging symptoms of spinal stenosis are distracting you? For most people with mild to moderate spinal stenosis, taking time off work when symptoms flare up simply isn’t an option, so it’s important to learn how you can manage symptoms while on the job.
If you are suffering from a pinched nerve in your neck, treatment in the form of temperature therapy may help bring you relief when used in conjunction with other conservative treatments. The benefits of applying hot and cold compresses to injured areas of the body have been known for hundreds of years, and today, physical therapists employ temperature therapy as a major facet of rehabilitation for injuries, postoperative pain, and degenerative conditions like pinched nerves in the spine.
Spinal stenosis treatment can take many forms, ranging from over-the-counter pain medication to corticosteroid spinal injections. While the general course of physician-prescribed treatments follows a tried-and-true path for all patients, each patient will respond to treatments differently, so the combination of treatments that is deemed successful for one patient may be nothing like the treatments that help another.
There are, however, almost always two common goals when it comes to treating spinal stenosis in the lower back (lumbar spine) and neck (cervical spine): relieve pain and other discomfort associated with spinal nerve compression and avoid the need for surgery. Read more
That neck pain you’ve experienced for far too long is no longer a mystery – the cervical spinal stenosis diagnosis you received from your primary care physician or spine specialist has finally given the condition a name. Yet, now that you know what is causing those excruciating symptoms, what can you do about it? Chances are, that is the very question you asked your doctor (or some variation) once you found out that the spinal cord or other neural openings in the cervical (neck) region of your spine were being restricted by some sort of anatomical abnormality. And while you might be well into a conservative treatment plan designed to manage your symptoms, some lingering questions might still remain. Chief among them: What happens if the conservative treatment doesn’t work?