Pinched Nerve

Pinched Nerve

Article by John Miller

What is a Pinched Nerve?

Nerve damage and the nerve pain and symptoms associated can occur when your nerve is pinched or entrapped. Your pinched nerve usually occurs as a result of injury to structures adjacent to the nerve. The best known pinched nerve would be the sciatic nerve.

Pinched Nerve in Lower Back

pinched nerve

When your sciatic nerve pinches in the back by a disc protrusionarthritic spur or swelling from a ligament injury, you are likely to experience referred leg pain. This sciatic nerve pinch is commonly known as sciatica.

Any compromise of the nerve space in your spinal column can lead to compression of the nerve endings. Pinching your nerve, regardless of the specific cause, will result in a combination of nerve pain, sensory loss, muscle weakness or altered reflexes.

All of your normal nerve function can be affected by a pinched nerve.

Pinched Nerve in Neck

Nerves can be pinched anywhere in your body. The second most common nerves that can pinch are your neck nerves. Pinching your neck nerve can result in arm pain, weakness and altered reflexes.

A pinched neck nerve’s symptoms can appear similar to common arm conditions such as carpal tunnel syndrometennis elbow and rotator cuff injury. If you have one of these conditions and it is not responding to treatment, maybe it has been misdiagnosed. Please seek qualified professional advice for a thorough assessment.

A pinched nerve in the neck is known medically as cervical radiculopathy. As you can see, it doesn’t have a cool name like “sciatica”, so it is less well known. If you are in marketing, maybe you could help out poor old cervical radiculopathy.

Peripheral Pinched Nerves

You can pinch a nerve anywhere in your body. The most likely region for a nerve pinch is where it is limited space around the nerve, e.g. tunnels through which your nerve passes.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is an example of a pinched peripheral nerve as it passes through the carpal tunnel in the front of your wrist.

How is a Pinched Nerve Diagnosed?

Pain is sent from your pinched nerve through the spinal cord nerves to your brain, where the pain interprets.

Your physiotherapist or doctor can detect where your nerve pinch is by the symptoms that you describe. They may refer you on to further diagnostic testing such as an X-ray, CT scan, MRI or nerve conduction testing to confirm the diagnosis or to view the severity of the nerve pinch.

What are the 5 Symptoms of a Pinched Nerve?

A significantly pinched nerve will affect your nerve function and can result in:

  • nerve pain
  • altered sensation: paraesthesia (pins & needles) or anaesthesia (numbness)
  • muscle weakness
  • diminished reflexes
  • loss of bladder or bowel function.

These symptoms may require urgent medical attention. The less time your nerve stays pinched, the better your outcome. Please contact your doctor or physiotherapist ASAP.

What is the PhysioWorks Difference?

You'll be impressed with the experienced physiotherapists, massage therapists, allied health team and reception staff who represent PhysioWorks.

To ensure that we remain highly qualified, PhysioWorks is committed to participating in continuing education to provide optimal care.



How You'll Benefit from the PhysioWorks Difference?




What are Some of the BIG Differences?



We attempt to treat the cause, not just the symptoms.




What Causes Arm Pain?



Causes of Arm Pain by Region

Causes of Arm Pain by Structure

Neck-related Arm Pain

Shoulder-related Arm Pain

Elbow-related Arm Pain

Wrist-related Arm Pain

Hand-related Arm Pain

Muscle-related Arm Pain

Other Sources of Arm Pain

Common Causes of Arm Pain


Referred Arm Pain



Arm Pain has Diverse Causes.


What Arm Pain is Associated with a Heart Attack?



Good News. Most Arm Pain is NOT Life-Threatening.


Arm Pain Prognosis


Common Arm Pain Treatments


Please ask your physiotherapist for their professional treatment advice.

Article by P.Xu


What is Physiotherapy Treatment?


There is a multitude of different physiotherapy treatment approaches.

Acute & Sub-Acute Injury Management

Hands-On Physiotherapy Techniques

physiotherapy treatment

Your physiotherapist's training includes hands-on physiotherapy techniques such as:


Physiotherapy Taping


Alternatively, your physiotherapist may recommend a supportive brace.

Acupuncture and Dry Needling


Physiotherapy Exercises


Biomechanical Analysis




Sports Physiotherapy


Vestibular Physiotherapy

Women's Health

Women's Health Physiotherapy is a particular interest group of therapies.

Workplace Physiotherapy



Plus Much More



Pain is the built-in alarm that informs you something is wrong! Pain is your body's way of sending a warning to your brain. Your spinal cord and nerves provide the pathway for messages to travel to and from your brain and the other parts of your body. Pain travels along these nerve pathways as electrical signals to your brain for interpretation. Receptor nerve cells in and beneath your skin sense heat, cold, light, touch, pressure, and pain. You have thousands of these receptor cells. Most cells sense pain. When there is an injury to your body, these tiny cells send messages along nerves into your spinal cord and then up to your brain. In general, pain receptors are classified according to their location. Receptors that respond to injury or noxious stimuli are termed nociceptors and are sensitive to thermal (heat), electrical, mechanical, chemical and painful stimuli. Each nociceptor is connected to a nerve that transmits an electrical impulse along its length towards the spinal cord and then, ultimately, your brain. It is your brain that informs you whether or not you are experiencing pain. Plus, your pain can plays tricks - especially when you suffer chronic pain.

Pain messages travel slower than other nerve stimulation.

Nerves can also be categorised according to their diameter (width) and whether a myelin sheath is present. Three types of nerves are concerned with the transmission of pain: A-beta fibres, which have a large diameter and are myelinated A delta fibres, which have a small diameter and also have myelinated sheaths. C fibres have small diameters and are non-myelinated (slowing their conduction rate) and are generally involved with the transmission of dull, aching sensations. Nerves with large diameter conduct impulses faster than those with a small diameter. The presence of a myelin sheath also speeds up the nerve conduction rate. One method of easing your pain is to provide your nervous system with high speed "good feelings" such as rubbing your injured area. This is the same principle that a tens machine (pain-relieving machines) utilises to provide pain relief.

Article by John Miller

Nerve Pain


What Causes Nerve Pain?

nerve pain A problem with your nerves themselves, which sends pain messages to the brain, causes neuropathic pain.

What Are Nerve Pain Symptoms?


What Causes Nerve Pain?

  • Shingles (post-herpetic neuralgia).
  • Trigeminal neuralgia.
  • Diabetic neuropathy.
  • Phantom limb pain (post-amputation).
  • Cancer.
  • Multiple sclerosis.
  • Chemotherapy.
  • HIV infection.
  • Alcoholism.
  • Other nerve disorders.

Nerve Pain & Nociceptive Pain


Nerve Pain Treatment


Pain Links

Pain & Injury

Tens Machine

What is a TENS Machine?

Chronic Pain

Recent research has helped to shed more light on the changes that occur in your body with chronic pain.

What is Normal ‘Protective’ Pain?

Normally pain is good. It informs you about potential or actual damage to your body’s tissues. Nociceptor nerve cells in the tissues of your body, react to strong stimuli such as pressure, heat, cold or chemicals. These nociceptors send a message to the spinal cord, which then forward another message up to the brain. Your brain then processes these messages and produces a coordinated response to escape whatever is causing the tissue damage.

What is ‘Pathological’ Pain?

Research has shown that changes occur in your body at all levels of pain processing. These changes include:

Changes at the Injury Site

At the site of the injury, your peripheral nerve becomes much more easily excitable.  This means that it takes far less of a stimulus to cause it fire off. In some cases, even a gentle brush against the skin is enough to fire off the pain pathway. Unfortunately it is not just the damaged nerves that become more excitable, but also the neighbouring nerves, which means even further amplification of the nerve messages. Some nerves can also start firing off spontaneously, which means that they do not need a stimulus to fire off.

Changes in your Spinal Cord

In the dorsal horn of the spinal cord, changes occur in some of the cells that receive the nociceptor messages. These changes lead to greater sensitivity to the spontaneous nociceptor messages mentioned previously. Changes can also occur in some cells that leads to a ‘memory’ developing between two cells, which leads to an amplified response in the neighbouring cell.

Changes in your Brain

Usually, your brain can decrease the level of pain you experience through releasing natural opioid hormones. When you suffer chronic pain, changes occur in the midbrain which actually increase the nociceptive messages. This means you’ll perceive even more pain. Chronic pain messages stimulate parts of the brain involved in emotion, fear and feelings. This may help explain why conditions such as depression, sleep disorders and pain catastrophising are linked in with chronic pain. We also know that chronic pain leads to atrophy or ‘shrinking’ of parts of the cortex and midbrain. Brain-stimulating activities may help to limit this ageing.

Do You Need More Information about Chronic Pain?

If you need more information about your pain or how to best manage your chronic pain, please consult the advice of your physiotherapist. Your physiotherapist is an highly trained at helping you to understand and reverse the changes that occur with chronic pain.

Article by John Miller

What Causes Pins & Needles?

What is Paraesthesia?


Even worse than "pins and needles" are "numbness" or "anaesthesia", which is a total lack of sensation. You will experience anaesthesia when there is severe nerve compression. Anaesthesia or numbness that persists for more than a few hours can signify permanent nerve compression. Please seek prompt medical attention to prevent the nerve from permanent damage and the muscles it innervates to weaken drastically.


Common Causes of Pinched Nerves

The most common forms of nerve compression are in the spinal joints, where either a disc bulge or a bony arthritic spur can irritate and compress the nerve. Compressions can also occur as the nerve passes through or around muscles. Your physiotherapist will know where to look.

How Can You Fix "Pins and Needles"?

If you know of someone who is experiencing chronic or permanent "pins and needles", "numbness", or "muscle weakness", please encourage them to seek urgent professional advice. The secret to quick success is the correct diagnosis. A highly trained health practitioner such as your physiotherapist or doctor is your best port of call.

More info

What is a TENS Machine?

TENS is an abbreviation of Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation.

What is Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation?

Transcutaneous means "across the skin". In simple terms, a tens machine stimulates your nerves via an electrical current through your skin. A TENS machine is an electronic medical device. A TENS machine may assist you in modest short-term pain relief.

The use of a TENS machine should be as one part of a pain management program under the guidance of your doctor or healthcare practitioner. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before using a TENS machine.

How Does a TENS Machine Provide Short-Term Pain Relief?

what is a tens machine?

Researchers believe that TENS controls pain in one of two ways:

Sensory Level Stimulation - The Gate Control theory of pain means that the electrical input of the TENS machine interferes with the transmission of pain signals by blocking the neural "gate" through which the pain travels.

Motor Level Stimulation - The goal of motor level stimulation is to cause the release of the body's opiate-like substances to achieve pain relief.



TENS Machine FAQs

Further Reading

Johnson M. 2014, Walsh DM et al. 2009, Nnoaham KE, Kumbang J. 2008, Watson 2008, Andrews JR et al. 2004

Potential TENS Machine Benefits

TENS is a non-invasive method for relieving pain. People who do experience some pain relief from TENS may reduce their intake of pain medications. This is an example of how a TENS machine may benefit you. TENS units are also convenient because they are small, portable, and relatively discrete. People can carry a TENS unit in their pocket or clip it onto a belt to ensure that they have immediate access to pain relief throughout the day.

Seek Professional Advice

The use of a TENS machine should be as one part of a pain management program under the guidance of your doctor/healthcare practitioner. Please seek their advice regarding your specific condition.

What is a TENS Machine?

TENS is an abbreviation of Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation. Transcutaneous means "across the skin". In simple terms, a tens machine stimulates your nerves via an electrical current through your skin. A TENS machine is an electronic medical device. A TENS machine may assist you in modest short-term pain relief.

How Does a TENS Machine Provide Short-Term Pain Relief?

Pain is thought to be controlled by TENS in one of two ways: Sensory Level Stimulation - The Gate Control theory of pain means that the electrical input of the TENS machine interferes with the transmission of pain signals by blocking the neural “gate” through which the pain travels. Motor Level Stimulation - The goal of motor level stimulation is to cause the release of the body’s own opiate-like substances to achieve pain relief.

TENS Machine FAQs

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