When many people hear “spinal cord injury,” their minds automatically leap to paralysis and wheelchairs. While these outcomes are very possible, not all spinal cord injuries are as severe as this. Some people develop less drastic side effects.
To explain this better, our team at Pain Medicine Consultants is diving into spinal cord injuries in this blog post and the different ways in which such an injury can affect your body.
Each year in the United States, there are approximately 18,000 spinal cord injuries, 78% of which occur in males. And at any given time, there are about 300,000 Americans living with spinal cord damage. Most of these injuries occur in car accidents, as well playing sports and falling.
When we refer to the spinal cord, we’re referring to the part of your central nervous system that connects your brain to your peripheral nervous system through your spine.
The nerve fibers in your spinal cord branch off out of each vertebral segment of your spine. You have 31 pairs of spinal nerve roots that exit the spine from the base of your head down to your pelvis. The location of symptoms from a spinal cord injury depend upon which nerve roots are affected.
There are two types of spinal cord injuries — incomplete and complete. With a complete injury, you lose all nerve function below the injury. With an incomplete injury, there is still a connection between your peripheral nervous system and your brain.
In this blog, we’re only going to touch on incomplete injuries, as complete injuries usually entail paralysis.
One of the types of nerves that can be affected by a spinal cord injury are your sensory nerves. So you may develop numbness — perhaps in your legs if the injury is in your lumbar spine or in your arms and hands if it’s in your neck.
Other than numbness, you might also feel a pins-and-needles sensation. Unfortunately, another possible way in which you can experience sensory nerve damage is pain — your nerves become overactive in their signaling.
If the damage affects motor nerves, you can lose movement. We already know that a complete spinal cord injury can lead to paralysis, but an incomplete one can lead to less complete loss of movement.
For example, you can develop muscle weakness or spasticity in which your muscles tense and you can't relax them.
Your spinal cord also provides passage for your autonomic nerves — the nerves that control automatic functions like heartbeat, digestion, and bladder control. It’s not uncommon for people with spinal cord injuries to develop functional issues, such as incontinence, lower body temperature, and a slower heart rate.
As you can see, even if the spinal cord injury is incomplete, it can still have a huge impact on your life. The good news is that there are ways in which we can help manage your symptoms through:
We might also recommend alternative therapies such as acupuncture to stimulate nerve function.
For expert diagnosis and treatment of spinal cord injuries, look no further than Pain Medicine Consultants. To learn more, we invite you to contact us at one of our offices in Pleasant Hill, Corte Madera, or Pleasanton, California, to schedule an appointment.
