If you’ve ever suffered any type of injury then you know how painful they can be. Nerve injuries often come in conjunction with several other types of injuries and can extend the pain you feel from your initial injury by weeks, months or even years. Sometimes nerve injuries can occur even when another injury doesn’t happen. Some of the ways that you can sustain nerve injuries include:
Lacerations on your skin, especially in areas where there are large concentrations of nerves, like your fingers, toes, or lips.
Serious impact injuries that are focused in one small area of your body, such as wounds caused by gun shot accidents and impaling accidents. Lesser impact injuries may occur when you have blood drawn or receive an injection, especially if the needle comes in contact with your nerves.
Accidents where your skin and muscles are stretched to the breaking point. This may including tripping up or down the stairs when your foot gets stuck.
Compression injuries, which are common in the spine and can result in pinched nerves.
Being electrocuted, even mildly, can also cause serious nerve problems, like tingling, loss of feeling or random shooting of pain.
The Most Common Types of Nerve Injuries
Although nerve injuries can occur to nearly every part of the body, there are some types of nerve injuries that are more common than others. These include:
Nerve injuries to the spine, most commonly the spinal accessory and cranial nerves.
Injuries to the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve and femoral nerves.
Injuries to your peroneal and sciatic nerves, which cause foot drop.
Injuries to your brachial plexus nerve.
Ways You Can Treat Nerve Injuries
It can be difficult to avoid sustaining nerve injuries unless you are able to avoid injuries all together. Keeping up muscle function and stretching regularly can help reduce your risk of injury and nerve injury. In some cases, the only way to treat nerve injuries is with surgery. But in lesser cases, the pain and issues with your nerve injuries may be able to be treated with massage therapy, medications like anti-inflammatories, orthotics for injuries affecting your feet, weight loss, physical therapy treatments and acupuncture therapies.