Spinal Stenosis Of Neck Symptoms (Cervical Spinal Stenosis)

what are the symptoms of spinal stenosis in your neck if you've been recently diagnosed with spinal stenosis in your neck or cervical spinal stenosis is the medical word for it maybe your doctor has told you that you have spinal stenosis in your neck or you've had an MRI and you see the word spinal stenosis it can be kind of a scary word especially if you start googling it and looking it up on the internet so I'm Dr Dave candy and in this video I'm going to explain to you what it really means to have spinal stenosis in your neck what the different types of spinal stenosis you can have in your neck are and the symptoms of those types of spinal stenosis plus how to know if it's serious and what you need to do about it so first of all you should know that there are three different types of spinal stenosis in your neck there's Central canal stenosis which is a narrowing of a space around the spinal cord it's basically the narrowing of the central Canal that runs from your head down through your spine and that Central canal stenosis is probably the most serious of them but most people even that have that don't need surgery for it now the second type is lateral recessed stenosis and moving out from the central Canal the nerve roots that come off of the spinal cord they pass over a area of bone and that area is called the lateral recess now after they go over that lateral recess they can also pass through the foramen or the holes in the side of the neck where the nerves come out and if those spaces are narrowed then that's called pyramidal stenosis the narrowing of the holes where the nerve Roots come out now stenosis doesn't necessarily mean anything serious it really just is a fancy medical word for narrowing of a space so whether that space is the central Canal or out your spinal cord or the space in the lateral recess or the space in the vertebral intervertebral foramen on the side of your neck where the nerve Roots come out all it means is that space is narrowed so the most obvious treatment for a narrowing of a space is to widen the space now the most difficult problem is in that Central Canal like I mentioned because you have your vertebrae and they're basically like a ring and if you look down through your head you've got those rings that are stacked up on top of one another one after the other after the other after the other now you can't widen that hole it's a ring of bone like that and so you can't make the hole any wider if it started to develop bone spurs or for whatever reason if that space is narrowed there's nothing short of surgery that you can do to widen that space but surgery in that area is very very dangerous because it's so close to your spinal cord that it can cause damage and possibly make the symptoms worse so if at all possible you want to avoid surgery now you can't anatomically make that space wider but what you can do is functionally widen that space if you've got the rings of bone and again you're looking down this way so you've got a ring of bone and then another ring of bone in front of it and so if you've got the two rings of bone that are stacked up on top of one another and you look down the center of them like this you can see that space is at what at its widest when the two vertebrae are in align with one another now if one vertebrae slides forward on the other it Narrows that space in between and that sliding forward that can happen when you sit with your head forward for example sitting looking forward like that that is akin to taking that space and shearing one vertebrae on the other so you're spinal canal is widest when you have all the vertebrae aligned where the holes are in a line with one another now not everyone in fact most people don't sit like that so a way that you can functionally widen the space in your spinal cord is just to sit with your ears over your shoulder chin down so that all the vertebrae are lined up with one another and those holes are stacked as best as possible in a straight line now you don't need to go overboard with it you don't need to go really far back that way and give yourself a military neck but you do want to sit so that you're not having your head forward and shearing the vertebrae and functionally narrowing those spaces between the two vertebrae so that's the first problem the central Canal spinal stenosis and what are the symptoms of central Canal spinal stenosis well if you have Central Canal spinal stenosis in your neck that's going to compress along the spinal cord and so that can cause numbness or tingling in your hands and or in your legs it can also cause some balance problems in more severe cases or can cause some stumbling like you look like you're walking around like you've had too much to drink but that's only in very serious cases the most common symptoms that you'll get if you have compression of the spinal cord or some tingling in your hands and feet you may notice if you go to the doctor and they check your reflexes your reflexes may be a little hyper reflexive for example if the doctor hits your knee with a hammer you might notice that your knee jerks a little bit more than it might normally and that's because when you have the compression on the spinal cord that sort of heightens the reflex arc it makes it a little bit bigger as opposed to if you have a pinched nerve on the side of your neck that causes more of a decreased reflex so that brings us to what are the symptoms of lateral stenosis or foraminal stenosis and those two are fairly similar because they don't pinch the spinal cord they pinch the nerve root that comes off of the spinal cord and so if you have a pinched nerve in the lateral recess or in the vertebral intervertebral foramen on the side of the neck that pinches the nerve root and it can cause numbness or tingling usually only in your hand or in your arm in that case it usually doesn't go down into your legs if it's just a nerve root that's pinched and how far down your arm it goes depends on the level that that nerve is pinched at the C5 nerve tends to go to the shoulder the C6 and C7 nerve go down into your arm and then the C7 C8 and T1 nerves make it all the way down into your hand and this C6 nerve goes down into your hand as well it goes into your thumb and index finger so depending on the level of the nerve that's pinched that may affect the symptoms that you have but you may have numbness or tingling or you may notice some weakness in your hand or your arm so what do you do about it well again most of those problems don't need surgery only when it's gotten really really really serious would you need surgery for that type of a nerve problem but if the problem hasn't quite gotten that serious when you bend your head forward bringing your head down that way that kind of helps open up the spaces between the nerve Roots additionally if you tip your head to the side it helps open up the spaces on this side and if you tip your head to the other side it opens up the spaces on that side so if you only have spinal stenosis in the foramen on one side you can try tipping your head to the opposite side and that will open this side up now a negative effect of that is it also closes that side down so if you've got degenerative disc disease and you've got some stenosis in the frame on both sides then that may not be as good of an option for you but the looking down or stretching with your head down that way that opens the spaces on both sides now again you don't want to sit with your head forward or look down like that because then that here's the central canal and so those are the stretches that you can do if you do have stenosis in the lateral recess or in the foramen in your neck so hopefully you found this video helpful to learn how to open up the spaces if you do have spinal stenosis in your neck to understand the symptoms that you may be having and hopefully it decreases some fear and know that chances are pretty good that you won't need surgery for it now if you do need help for spinal stenosis in your neck and you happen to live in the St Louis area we'd be happy to help you out and more for life and if you're watching this from somewhere else but you found the video helpful give it a like And subscribe to our channel so you can get notified for our future videos thanks for watching and have a great day

Channel: More 4 Life

Views: 33,994

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Id: -EQXlZV5DdY

Length: 9min 25sec (565 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 06 2023