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Can Your Neck Affect Your Fingers?

You wake up one morning with a tingling, numbing sensation that starts at the top of your arms and goes all the way down into your fingers.

When you arrive in our office for your regular adjustment and tell us about this problem, don’t be surprised when I examine your neck!

“My neck? Why on earth would you look at my neck when my fingers are numb?”

Fortunately, that’s an easy one to answer in a way that you can understand.

All the nerves in your body travel from your brain stem, down through your spine and out to all the areas in your body. Just so happens that cervical (neck) nerves conduct the impulses that travel from the brain, through the spinal cord, out to the neck and arms and back again.

So…when your arms, fingers and hands are affected like that, the first thing we examine is your cervical spine, particularly the region around your C5, C6 and C7 vertebrae. If there is any nerve interference in that area, your fingers may very well be tingling and/or numb! Once the interference is removed, the impulses travel back and forth as they should.

What this shows is that the likely cause of any physical condition may not be what or where you think it is. Did you think that your neck could really affect your fingers?

Chiropractors are trained to locate and relieve nerve interference in the spine. We know the anatomy of the spine and what nerves affect specific areas and organs of the body. So your chief complaint at any given visit gives us a “heads up” on a probable source of the problem. We don’t treat symptoms, we attempt to locate causes of conditions – nerve interference or subluxations, that prohibit your body from functioning as it should.

If you have a particular concern, be sure to bring it up at your next visit. Numbness and tingling sensations are not signs of over exertion or old age – but they may be signs that your nervous system is “out of whack” and we can certainly try to help that!