Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. People ask me all the time “What’s causing my pain? Is it nerve pain? Is it some other kind of pain? Ultimately, all pain is nerve pain. All sensation is coming from nerves as well. In the spine, the nerves for our whole entire body, originate here in the spine. They come out on either side and each of these little nerves branches over 10,000 times and go to form a whole nerve network in our body.

If there’s compression on these nerves… Let me show you how that can happen. This is a model of the vertebrae, the bone, and there’s a disk in between. We can see this hole here where the nerves are coming out. If the disk… Let me back up a step, if the bone get’s out of place, it can put pressure on not only on the joints that move here, but on the disk. And the disk is a big factor in what puts pressure on these big nerves because it will bulge to one side or the other, and typically, towards the back.

If it does bulge or put pressure on these nerves, and it doesn’t take much, we used to talk about like pliers, pinching the nerve. In reality, they’re very, very delicate structures. And just inflammation around the joint or around that area in general can put pressure on these nerves, can cause not only pain but other problems, digestive problems and a host of other issues because they’re going to run our whole entire body. So, the cause of the pain is coming from some sort of compression or distortion on a nerve somewhere.

If we can remove that pressure, not only will your pain go away or other symptoms, but it will allow that nerve to do what it’s supposed to do which is feed some function in your body, ie, it’s going to be a pathway for your brain to communicate with some portion of the body and get that communication back. That back and forth communication is crucial for our body to run properly.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with your Health Minute.