Even if you’ve never had a pinched nerve, you probably know that, whatever it is, it’s not good. After all, when you were a kid, getting pinched was at best annoying and at worst, pretty painful, so having signs of a pinched nerve now is—you might imagine—unpleasant. But what is a pinched nerve, and what causes it? And more important, how can we spot the signs of a pinched nerve, and how can we treat it? You’ll find the answers to all of those questions below.
What is a pinched nerve?
A pinched nerve happens when something puts too much pressure on one of your nerves, be it surrounding bones, cartilage, muscles, or tendons, the Mayo Clinic explains. This interrupts your nerve’s ability to function, causing pain and a bunch of other not-fun symptoms that can feel totally mystifying (we’ll get to that in a second).
First, how do pinched nerves happen?
There are plenty of reasons why you might get a pinched nerve, since basically anything that puts pressure on your nerves can cause one. Potential causes include having an injury, a health condition like arthritis, and physical stress in one part of your body from repetitive work, the Mayo Clinic says. Pregnancy can also raise your risk, since weight gain can swell nerve pathways, compressing your nerves in the process. Diabetes is another risk factor, since diabetes-induced high levels of sugar and fat in your blood can damage your nerves and the blood vessels that nourish them, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Issues.
Having a pinched nerve may sound really serious, and it can become serious, but if your nerve is compressed for a short time, once that pressure is relieved through rest or treatment, most people recover within a few days or weeks. But if the pressure goes unchecked, you can deal with chronic symptoms and even permanent nerve damage. “It’s always in your best interest to contact your doctor if your symptoms don’t resolve quickly,” Ilan Danan, M.D., a sports neurologist at the Center for Sports Neurology and Pain Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles, tells SELF.
What are the symptoms of a pinched nerve?
Although you can get symptoms of a pinched nerve in many locations on your body, they often show up in your arms, hands, legs, or feet, depending on the location of the nerve compression, A. Nick Shamie, M.D., professor and chief of Orthopaedic Spine Surgery at UCLA Health, tells SELF. These are the big pinched nerve symptoms to look out for:
1. You have pins and needles.
To understand why this happens, you have to know that there are three main types of nerves in your body: sensory nerves, which are responsible for you feeling things; motor nerves, which control voluntary movement of your muscles; and autonomic nerves, which take care of automatic organ-related functions like sweating, regulating your blood pressure, and breathing, per the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).
Your nerves’ job is to transmit signals from one point to another in your body. “Anything that blocks that signal from occurring will result in some manifestation of symptoms,” Dr. Danan says. A pins-and-needles feeling usually means that a sensory nerve is being compressed, he says.
2. You have numbness or decreased sensation in one area of your body.
This has a lot to do with pressure causing poor blood flow to the nerve, Dr. Shamie says, offering the example of “being unable to feel your arm in the morning when you wake up because you were lying on it.” Pressure can cause issues with the nerves’ ability to fire, he says. As a result, your hand or arm might feel numb until you relieve the pressure that’s blocking the blood flow.
3. It feels like your hand or foot falls asleep a lot.
If you notice that this tends to happen when you sit on your leg or rest your arm a certain way, then it goes away when you move, it’s highly likely that you’re just compressing the nerve temporarily with your position, Dr. Danan says. But if it happens seemingly out of nowhere and you’re not sure why, it’s important to check in with a doctor to see what might be causing the compression.
4. You have a sharp, aching, or burning pain, and it might radiate outward.
This can happen because something near the nerve is inflamed and compressing it, or the nerve itself is inflamed, Dr. Shamie says. “It’s your body’s way of alerting you that something is going on.”