Hi, I'm Natalie, and today Veritas Health is going to bring you three easy exercises for cervical radiculopathy.
Cervical radiculopathy refers to a change in neurologic function that's either caused by pressure, inflammation or damage to the cervical nerve roots.
This can result in neck pain, arm and hand pain, as well as tingling, numbness or or even weakness. These exercises can help strengthen the neck and postural muscles as well as improving flexibility.
If any of these exercises make your symptoms worse, increase the symptoms in your arm or cause more pain, please discontinue and consult with your medical provider.
The first exercise I'm going to show you guys is a chin tuck.
So to do this you're going to stand up tall or sit up tall with good posture and you are going to slide your chin straight back. If you're doing it correctly, it should feel kind of awkward and you should have a bit of a double chin.
Go as far back as you can go. If you find your voice getting muffled, you're doing it correctly.
If it helps, you can use your finger on your chin to help guide yourself straight back.
In this position though, you should still be able to breathe.
Make sure your chin doesn't go too far down or too far up as you go back.
It can sometimes help to do this sitting in a chair so you have some support behind your upper back to help you get that motion straight back. You can start with about ten of those and if the symptoms in your arm and neck don't worsen or improve, that's great.
If it makes it worse, discontinue and please consult with your medical provider.
The next exercise I'm going to show you guys is a prone cobra. This is to help strengthen the muscles of the scapula area and the necks, as well as promote better posture.
So you can lay on your belly, either on the floor or on your bed.
You're going to have your hands at your side and then try to lift your chest, upper body and face off the ground.
Try to keep your chin a little bit of tuck while you're here.
Hold that for 10 seconds, squeezing the shoulder blades together and then relax.
You can work your way up to 10-10 second holds.
If this position is too hard for you though, you can modify on your elbows and just practice trying to lift your neck and face away from the ground.
Pull your face and chin back, hold for 10 seconds and you can work your way up to forming ten of those.
The final exercise I'll show you guys which can help promote better posture of your upper body and neck is a scapular retraction or shoulder blade squeeze.
You're going to have your elbows bent and arms relaxed and just draw your shoulder blades together as if you're trying to get them to touch.
Hold that for 10 seconds.
I'll show you from the back, shoulder blades going to squeeze together.
Hold for 10 seconds. Try to keep your neck and upper body tall as you do this.
And try not to poke your chin out.
You can work up to performing that exercise for 10 seconds, ten times total to help strengthen your upper back.
To learn more about cervical radiculopathy, please visit us at Spine-health and be sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos like this one.
Thank you for watching.
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