"What Are The Symptoms Of A Pinched Nerve?"
by Dr. J. Alex Sielatycki

Symptoms of a pinched nerve typically are pain-related. So if you have a nerve that's irritated as it comes off the spinal cord before it goes down the arm, if you pinch a nerve in that area, you will feel pain in the course of that nerve as it travels down the arm. So patients will often have pain shooting down one arm or another. That pain is often described as electrical shooting, burning pain, sometimes numbing tingling sensation (that is painful). That's a common scenario of a disc herniation.

Now sometimes if it's been there a long time, it's been more of a chronic disc herniation that can result in more of a bad toothache that just stays persistent and aches all the time or hurts more with certain activities and improves with lying down or resting.

So some of it depends on the acuity of the condition. If you have an acute disc herniation or a big soft disc herniation that is pinching the nerve, that would typically cause severe pain, electrical sensations down the arm, numbness, tingling, and things of that nature.

And a lot of times, one of the classic findings that I see is patients that have a disc herniation in the neck. If they raise their arm up, put it behind their head, that will often relieve the neck and the arm pain. So that's a telltale sign. If you can do this and the pain down the arm goes away, it's probably a herniated disc in the neck.