What We Look For on X-Rays When Numbness and Tingling in the Hands or Feet

Dr. Olson here with Nokomis Chiropractic and Wellness in South Minneapolis. Today, we're going to take a few minutes and talk about one of the most common conditions that we treat in our office and that's the condition of numbness and tingling in the hands and feet. Now, numbness, and tingling in the hands and feet is also called peripheral neuropathy. The reason that we're going to talk about it today is it is super prevalent. A lot of people have it where they have the numbness and tingling all day long. Maybe it's when they wake up in the morning, also driving or working on the computer. It really interferes with the quality of life. The thing is numbness and tingling is one of the most misdiagnosed and misunderstood conditions that people get checked out for. Most people, because their numbness and tingling is in the hands and the feet, keep thinking that the problem is in the hands and feet. Well, it is true that in about 20% of the cases you could have something actually wrong in the wrist, or something wrong with nerves in the feet like diabetes. Most likely, the more common cause of problems is actually having a vertebral misalignment in your back. When the nerves in the neck come out of alignment and pinch on the nerves, that nerve travels down into the arms and hands and gives a sensation of numbness and tingling in the arms and hands. The other is from the low back. Those vertebrae in the low back when they're out of alignment, they travel down the legs and feet and give them the feeling of numbness and tingling in the feet. So that's why getting a chiropractic evaluation, it's the most important thing that you can do if you've been suffering from numbness and tingling for any length of time at all because the bottom line is that if that vertebra is out of alignment, there's no way that Advil, or Tylenol, or any other treatments can actually correct the problem. The other thing that's really important is that when you go and get checked by somebody, make sure that they got X-Rays that they take on that area. So we're going to take just a couple of seconds and I'm going to actually show you what we see on X-Rays on when we're doing X-Rays on numbness and tingling. What we've done here is we've taken an X-Ray of a normal neck, and the X-Ray of a neck of a person who has numbness and tingling in their hands. Here I show you what we're seeing in an X-Ray that helps us understand the cause of the problem. In a normal neck, we see that there's a nice big arch in the neck. On some people, we see that it is straight. In the normal we see there are big spaces called the "disc spaces", and that's the spot where the nerve comes out. Or, we see that space is starting to deteriorate and get smaller or we see that the bones are all nice and round, and smooth. Often we see where someone is starting to get boney arthritis spots at the back of the disc in one of the bones, and that actually puts pressure or pinching on the nerve. So without an X-Ray, there's absolutely no way that you can know the difference between the normal and what the cause of the problem is. I hope you find this video to be really valuable, and if you did, would you please like the video and share it? And even more importantly, just take the video and send it to a friend or family member that suffers from numbness and tingling because I can tell you, they would really appreciate having an answer and a solution. And most importantly, if they would like to come on in, they can call our office and schedule a complimentary consultation, be happy to sit down, understand their case, and help them evaluate, and get them out of pain once and for all.