Many people will complain about pain down the side of the arm. There are several very different conditions that may be causing this. This post will discuss the most common ones.
Pain down the side of the arm is a common symptom of a rotator cuff tear
The rotator cuff is made of four muscles that wrap around the humeral head (bone that goes into the shoulder “socket”) to stabilize it. Rather than feeling pain at these muscles themselves, patients usually report pain going down the side of their arm. You can read more about diagnosing a rotator cuff tear here, and about treating a rotator cuff tear here.
Issues stemming from the neck can cause pain down the side of the arm as well.
This type of pain can feel like “pulling”, achiness, or tingling down the arm. Numbness and tingling can radiate into the fingers and hand as well. There are several issues that may be occurring at the cervical spine. These issues can include structural changes in the joints, simple muscle hypertonicity (think: “angry”, tense muscles) and joint stiffness.
Another common (and VERY treatable) issue that can stem from the cervical spine is neural tension. Neural tension means that your nerves are irritated and aren’t moving through your tissues the way they should be. That may sound intense but I promise it isn’t. Allow me to explain.
We have the brain at the top of the spinal cord. The spinal cord exits from the bottom of the brain, and at each level of the spine our nerves exit. Our nerves go to our neck, arms, fingers, torso, etc all the way down to our toes. Think of the nerves as a string. The top of the string is the brain, and the bottom of the string we’re focusing on here is at the fingertips. As we move our head and hand, that string may be slightly restricted or irritated. We can easily calm this down – I will dedicate a future post to this!
The third cause of your pain can be coming from the elbow
Just like the nerve can be irritated as it exits the neck, it can be irritated as it passes through some small spaces in the elbow. It’s important to rule out with your provider if this is coming from a nerve, or if it’s a simple tendonitis. You can read about treating “tennis elbow,” a common tendonitis, here.
I have seen more than one of these co-occur on a patient.
Some patients have only one issue that causes the pain down their arm. Many patients, typically those with cervical (neck) involvement, have a couple of things going on at once. In these situations it’s important to make sure you have individualized care so that all of your conditions are addressed. Please remember that this post only includes some of the more common causes of pain down the arm. There are many other potential causes. As always, I suggest seeing your provider for workup if you have concerns.
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