Video Transcript: Radial Nerve Glide to Alleviate Radial Nerve Pain

Hi, everyone! Dr. Orit Hickman here from Pain Science Physical Therapy.

I wanted to put together a really quick video for you to address some pain that we actually just had a patient come in the other day experiencing. And, we were really kind of confused about it because we thought it was just like sort of your run-of-the-mill, average elbow tendinopathy or elbow tendonitis pain. And so, what the patient had was they had pain with grip. They had pain lifting their wrists up. They had pain with pulling motion. And, it seemed to be that that was more of a tendon irritation. But, when we did more tests, what we found out was the irritation was actually of the radial nerve, which is one of the nerves that come from the neck and comes down the arm down the outside of the wrist and the forearm.

And so, when you’re treating a nerve, you don’t do the same type of exercises as you do as if you’re treating a muscle or a tendon. So, a radial nerve glide is a wonderful exercise to treat this type of pain. And so, what we had the patient do was we had them start with their arm out like this. And, this was the side that they were having pain on. And then, we had them rotate and bring the arm back a little bit. And then, you rotate the arm forward. And then, you rotate the arm back. I’m going to show you that from the side so you can see what that looks like. So, you start with the arm forward. And then, you rotate the arm back. You bring the arm forward, and you rotate the arm back.

And, nerve glides are movement for the nerves. Nerves really like to have blood flow. They really like to have movement. They really like to have enough space. So, if you have a nerve that’s irritated, doing something like this, this really gentle movement, should help make that nerve feel more calm over time. Typically, we would tell a patient to do that about five to ten repetitions and repeat about three to five times a day.

Give it a try. See if that helps your symptoms, and let me know how it goes. If you felt like this video was helpful, I’d love a thumbs-up. Feel free to subscribe so you can get more videos about pain, physical therapy, and especially persistent pain. Have a great day!