Question
I went to the Dr. last week as my right hand has been going numb for about a month. The numbness happens when I am sleeping and also when I am holding things in my hand. A few examples would be when I am applying eye liner or feeding my daughter with a spoon. The Dr. sent me for x-rays and they found that I have a ligament injury in the C6 and C7 and scheduled me for an MRI. That is all of the information I have gotten so far. I don't know what I did for this to happen. My hands did go numb while I was pregnant about 10 months ago. I am just curious as what they might do with me to "fix" the problem. Or, is this something I am going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. I also experience a lot of lower back pain. I have bad posture do to the fact that I am extremely well endowed up top. Could any of this be caused by the extra weight up top? I am tossing the idea of a breast reduction if it will help relive some of the pain in my back. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Answer
Hello, Jenny.

First, some clarity on your diagnosis.

A ligament injury, in itself, won't cause the nerve impingement that causes numbness.  If you have such an injury, it would only cause looseness in the relationship among neighboring vertebrae.

To substitute for ligamentous support, muscles may go into contraction to stabilize relationships among vertebrae.  If certain muscles get sufficiently tight, they may trap and compress nerves that exit the neck (cervical spine) in the area, and that would cause numbness.

Such muscular tensions may also occur without ligamentous damage, generally due to past trauma, and in your case, being well-endowed, you may have developed neck tension in reaction to the downward pull of bra straps on your shoulders.

In other words, you may or may not have a ligamentous injury, and even if you do, it does not directly lead to nerve impingement.

The most conservative, easiest, least painful, least expensive, and fastest approach would be clinical somatic education to free your neck muscles and movements.  You would need that even if you had surgery.

As to lower back pain, the cause is similar:  muscular contractions.

I'm giving you links to two articles to understand and plan your course of action:

http://www.somatics.com/whiplash.htm (for nerve impingement information)

http://www.somatics.com/back_pain_Q&A.htm (for lower back pain).

with regard,
Lawrence Gold