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Are your Crutches Causing More Damage?

Most people use them the wrong way!

Crutches can actually Cause Pain!

Crutches are one of the most used mobility aid’s that are used during injury recovery.

A couple of times a week we see patients who want a solution to pain during use of their crutches.

Here is the reason why you may feel pain in your  underarms when using crutches regularly and the reason you should avoid crutches all together.

What is Crutch Paralysis

If you are using underarm or “axillary” crutches incorrectly, you can suffer from Crutch paralysis.

This occurs when you rest your underarms on your crutches for an extended period of time. 

The pressure on the nerves and muscles in your underarm region over a long period of time can lead to either partial or full paralysis of the muscles in that region, permanent nerve damage and even loss of movement or feeling in the arm altogether.

What is Crutch Palsy?

Even with short term use of crutches, you can experience  something called “crutch palsy”.,

This is when you feel tingling or numbness in your arms when using your crutches.

Again this is directly related to pressure on the axillary nerve and therefore you should seek medical advice from your local health care professional.

How to minimise time on crutches

If you have sustained an injury and need crutches, it is important to visit your local health care professional as soon as you can to determine the nature of the injury as soon as possible.

You may consider visiting a Gonstead Chiropractor who will x-ray and assess the injured region and provide a comprehensive plan to effectively heal the injury in the shortest time possible to get you off crutches and back to walking as normal.

The longer you use crutches, your posture will be affected and other areas of your body will be under more stress which can lead to other issues.

It is important to make sure you use the correct set of crutches for your injury and that is why our
doctors at Pure Chiropractic go into very specific detail how to utilise crutches safely after you sustain an injury.

Get in touch now with one of our doctors to identify how we can assist your journey out of pain on (03) 8522 1922 or make a booking here.

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