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Neck pain is a common health complaint. It causes discomfort in any of the structures in the neck including muscles nerve, bones, and the disks in between the bones.

Pain in the neck is often described as having a stiff neck, where you have difficulty turning from one side to the other. You may also feel weakness in your arm or hand, numbness and tingling especially if it involves neck pain.

The fact that our neck is so flexible and supports our head makes it vulnerable to injury. Health practitioners estimate that:

• one in 10 adults is experiencing pain and discomfort at this moment
• 50% – 85% of people will be bothered by neck pain again at some point in their lives
• at least one in 10 will find their neck pain disabling 

If you’ve ever tipped over on your ankle then you will understand the pain of an ankle sprain. Most people don’t bother doing anything about it, other than resting up and taking painkillers, because they believe it’s nothing to worry about and it will clear up on its own in a few days.

Well, yes, it probably will but did you know that if you don’t get treatment or administer a little treatment yourself, then you could be putting yourself at risk of re-sprain in the future, or even weakness and problems with your gait?

All this from a simple ankle sprain!

Life has a habit of kicking us where it hurts, and when it comes to chronic pain or generalised niggles, it can feel like toothache of the worst kind in a totally different place!

There are many different treatment routes to go down for such pain, but if you don’t get to find out what it is exactly that is causing it, how can you know you’re not just masking it, and that it won’t just flare up again in the future?

This is where chiropractic comes in very useful indeed.

Feeling tingling, numbness or weakness on either of your hands? You might be suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome or CTS. Here, Epping chiropractor Dr. Gus Gunther gives a brief overview of this condition.

A brief lesson in anatomy

In order to better understand CTS, it is worthwhile to give a brief look into the anatomy of your hand and forearm.

The carpal tunnel refers to the space found in a person’s wrist where tendons and the median nerve run through from the forearm to the hands. The median nerve is responsible for the movement and feeling in the thumb, index, middle and ring fingers.

The tingling, numbness or weakness that you are experiencing is caused by the pressure on the median nerve. This occurs due to the narrowing of the carpal tunnel due to swelling.