Hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and today I'm going to show you some stretches and
exercises for cervical radiculopathy. Let's get started.
So if you have this, you know is pretty ridiculous, and you want to get rid of
that pain because it's nerve pain. Basically what radiculopathy is is the
nerve root at the spine gets inflamed and irritated and then it causes that
pain usually down the arm or if it's in the lower body down the leg. So to start
off with, we're just going to do some nerve glides. With nerve glides, remember
you just want to do a little bit. Maybe ten just one time a day because if you
do too many, it will flare up the nerve even more that's definitely what you
don't want.
So to start off with, take the arm and put it almost up into a stop sign
position, but turn your palm facing you, and what you do is imagine that there's
a string on your finger and your head so they follow each other. So basically
you're going to pull your head over and straighten your arm out and then come
back in. Try to keep your head in a straight forward position,
don't turn towards it, but keep it straight ahead, and then just side bend
over and follow that hand going down and coming back up. So again just start off
with 10 of these. I wouldn't recommend anymore because it might flare it up a
little bit more. Then you're going to go into some stretching into a trap stretch,
and that's those muscles back here where they get tight they they pull in and put
pressure on that spine and put pressure on the nerves. So for the trap stretch, if
I'm stretching my right side, I'm going to put my hand down. Some people put it
behind their back you can do that. If you're sitting in a chair,
it helps to kind of grab on the bottom of the chair cause then that kind of
stabilizes the shoulder because you don't want your shoulder coming up, you
want it to stay down. And then take your opposite hand and then just pull away
and hold that stretch for 30 seconds. So you should feel that stretch right in
through there, and just nice hold. See if I'm not holding on that shoulder comes
up a little bit, and I'm it's not terrible but then I'm not getting quite
as much of a stretch, so make sure you kind of
pull it down, you can just take your fist and push it down as well. Holding that
for 30 seconds and then doing that three times. If you want to do both sides you
can as well.
The next one is going to be a chin tuck, and we've talked about chin tucks in the
past where it's not tucking down towards your chest, but it's actually tucking it
in making a whole lot of little chin's there. So the goal is to make a whole
bunch of wrinkles right there.
So what I like to do is kind of use my finger as a target just so I know that
I'm actually retracting that chin back. So just starting here, and then it's
almost like I'm trying to take the back of my head towards my other hand. So just
scrunching, in getting lots of little chin's there, but keeping that chin up.
Hold it for about three to five seconds, and then relax, and you can see that
there's a space now between my finger and my chin, and I moved it a little bit,
but you can tell that there's a difference there. And then move it again
and retract. Hold it there three to five seconds, and do about five of those. Then
the next one is going to be the chin retraction with a little bit of an
extension, and remember with extension if you have neck issues anyways, sometimes
this movement for people makes you dizzy or very painful, so don't feel like you
have to do a lot, you're just getting that movement. So you're going to do that
chin retraction first, and then just an up and down while you're retracted. So
you can try and do about five at a time while you're retracted, or relax each
time because sometimes it's hard because you haven't work those muscles in a
while, people tend to get that forward head posture and then these become weak
these become tight, so you might have to do one chin tuck go up,
relax. But if you can hold it and do about five at a time, that's the best and
then do two sets of five. So there you have it, those were your stretches for
cervical radiculopathy. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments
section. iIf you'd like check out some other videos go to
askdoctorjo.com And remember, be safe have fun (don't be ridiculous), and I hope
you feel better soon.