Nerve Glides

I debated writing this post but I decided to do it anyway.  So I’ll just say DO AT YOUR OWN RISK.  Nothing that a physical therapist does is life threatening or anything but of everything I would have patients do, this could cause the most potential harm.  When you stretch something, say your arm, and you feel your fingers start to tingle, stop.   That means you’re stretching a nerve and you don’t want to stretch nerves.  But, nerves can shorten just like muscles can shorten.  Also, you can stretch out nerves just like you can stretch out muscles.  But you have to be careful and do it differently.  Enter nerve glides.  Nerve glides are a way to mobilize the nerve and stretch it out without causing harm.  Here’s a way to tell if your leg/butt pain(sciatica) is from a tight nerve.  Bend over at the waist, I bet it hurts.  Now, bend over at the waist with the painful leg bent at the knee.  If doing this takes away the pain it’s probably a tight nerve causing the pain.  See, when the knee is bent those nerves are on slack so they can’t cause pain.  So what do you do about this?  Nerve glides.  In the case of the sciatic nerve acting up, here’s what you do laying down.  Here’s what you do sitting up.  As soon as you feel that tingly feeling or pain, go the other direction.  Here’s a glide for the nerve in your arm that’s on the side of your pinky finger(this is the nerve that hurts when you hit your funny bone).  Here’s a glide for the nerve on the thumb side of the arm.