Pinched Nerve Symptoms

If you are tormented by a pinched nerve, a bulging disc or a herniated disc – have you been told you may need surgery?  This is a scary thought for most people, indeed. Are you seeing a chiropractor several times a week, with little or no improvement? You may not even understand what is actually causing your pain, in most cases. Pinched nerve symptoms can be caused by things such as injury, car accident, sleeping incorrectly, or any number of activities that people do every day.

Most people do not really comprehend the cause of a pinched nerve, a bulging disc, or even a herniated disc. Usually our vertebrae are responsible for the agony in our body. What we fall short to understand is that our bones cannot pinch anything without our muscles. In fact if you were to remove your muscles, your bones would simply collapse. So how can your bones be the cause of your pain? The answer is, they aren’t.

If we take a look at our back and neck, where most pinched nerves and disc problems occur, you see on both sides of your spine lay two muscles that run from the base of your skull to the top of your pelvis. From the moment you stand up on 2 feet, your disc started to collapse as the pressure grew from your body getting heavier. Just picture a stack of bricks with rubber spacers in between them. On the outside of the blocks there are two rubber bands linked to the top and the bottom of the bricks. As I shorten the rubber bands the bricks will come closer together, squeezing on the rubber spacers, literally flattening them. If I tighten one side more than the other, the stack will lean to that side. This causes pressure on one side to be greater than the pressure on the other.

What you are visualizing is your spine moving each day of your life. The only thing that will take that pressure off is to stretch your back muscles with Active Isolated Stretching. I am not talking about traditional stretching like you see in the gym, it just doesn’t work.

Traditional stretching requires you to hold a stretch for more than 2-3 seconds. This engages your stretch reflex in your muscle causing it to contract to protect itself. It becomes more of a isometric strength training exercise which actually shortens the muscle. Active Isolated Stretching(AIS), only requires you to hold the stretch for 2-3 seconds then repeat 10 times.

Once you open up the muscles in your hips and shoulders, you will start to take pressure off your spine. This will relieve pressure on a pinched nerve stopping the pain. For a bulging disc, the pressure will be relieved and blood flow will return to the disc allowing it to lubricate. Now it will slide back into place. This will stop the pain. Herniated discs are discs that have been cut by the pressure applied to the vertebrae. Once you take that pressure off, the disc can heal and go back to doing its job.

Many people use inversion tables or tables that stretch out their back. These work momentarily until you stand back up. Yes you did take the pressure off the spine, but you did not lengthen the hip muscles or the shoulder muscles, so once you stand back up the pressure is re-applied.

Go find a therapist who teaches Active Isolated Stretching today and learn how to heal your own body. Do not accept any other gadget or treatment until you at least try Active Isolated Stretching. Take care of your spine and you won’t suffer from pinched nerve symptoms any longer.