It’s important to remember that your spine all the way from your neck to your lower back, is a vast tunnel filled with nerves that interconnect throughout your body. Therefore, if you’re experiencing symptoms in other areas of the body, known as referred pain, as well as suffering from neck or back pain (this can be either acute or chronic) that the solution may rest with solving the issues going on with your spine first and foremost.

Disc Compression in the Neck or Lower Back

In the same way that you can experience sciatic pain, a type of referred pain that runs from the buttocks, across the backs of the legs and down into the feet in some cases, as a result of disc compression in the lower back, it is also possible to experience referred pain stemming from disc compression in your neck. In fact, the two most susceptible areas of your spine to injury are either the neck or lower back, due the load bearing roles they play within our anatomy. Disc compression can occur for many reasons, but can cause nerves that deliver signals to the arms and hands to become inflamed or pinched. When a nerve that transmits signals to an area of your body becomes under pressure, it’s likely you may experience symptoms affecting the area of your body that the signal is travelling to. The symptoms that can affect you in this case could be anything from a dull ache, to pain either moderate or severe, constant or intermittent, or tingle in the area rather like pins and needles when you’re sitting in the same place for too long.

Be Mindful of Posture at Work or Home

While you’re at work it’s vital that you’re checking in with your posture every so often in the short-term until good posture becomes a natural habit. Make sure that you’re sitting up straight, your shoulders should not be hunched, and your neck should be in a neutral position while looking at the screen of your computer. A neutral position means you won’t be looking up at the screen but you shouldn’t be looking down either – it should be perfectly at eye-level. Try not to lean forward or slouch backwards into the chair for sustained periods of time. The same logic should be used while watching television in the evening, and if you’re a regular user of a mobile device such as a smartphone or iPad, you should be making sure that you’re not leaning your head far forward and holding your phone below.

Other potential causes that should be nothing to worry about are if in general you’re perhaps sitting or doing something in your everyday life that is somehow cutting off the blood supply to your hands – for example if you regularly lay down holding your phone above the head. In this case, simple lifestyle adjustments should mean that you no longer experience those symptoms.

If you’ve ruled out all of the above, and you’re still not sure on the cause of pins and needles in your hands it may be time to seek the help of a professional. A local osteopath should be able to properly and accurately assess your body for any dysfunctions that could be causing these symptoms and recommend steps that you can take to relieve these.

At The Mayfair Clinic we perform a series of orthopaedic tests to narrow down what kind of problem you have, followed by x-ray imaging if we think you need it, to provide you with a detailed diagnosis and report, along with a recommendation of what kind of treatment at our clinic would give you the best chance of relieving your symptoms in the long-term. Their recommendations should hopefully give you a fighting chance to stop the symptoms, without the use of painkillers.

If you’ve been suffering from pins and needles or pain that you believe has been referred from an issue affecting a spine, give our expert team a call today on 0203 947 3222 or email us at info@themayfairclinic.com to discuss your case and book your first appointment.