UKH

A friend has been laying slabs, and hammering with a heavy hammer, and now having pain across the tops of her arms, thanks to the unaccustomed use, has seen a doctor and a couple of physios, and been told that it's nerve damage, and that following a few sessions, further sessions probably won't be any help.

My Dad's response might be to just 'Eat lots of meat' (being conventional and of an earlier generation), but she's a vegan, which I wonder might be affecting regrowth and repair of things. Has anybody any experience of this, or informed knowledge, and any pointers towards recovery?

Many thanks.

Tim

Well I know vibrating tools can cause damage to nerves in the hand, but to damage nerves doing unaccustomed work as you describe sounds unusual to me. 

I badly walloped my left elbow a couple of times working on building sites. As I also play the violin I was very aware that my ring and little fingers were slow and 'stupid' - slow as in maybe 1/10 of a second slow to fire when playing. Also continuous pins and needles. Induction tests showed I had 50% impairment on that nerve.

Basically, I did a pile of practice till I'd trained the brain to fire those fingers marginally early. I still have the pins and needles decades later, though it feels completely normal for it to feel like that now. 

The bonesaws wanted to do a risky operation. The nerve guys said don't take that chance and keep mobile and active. They were delighted I played the fiddle to speed up recovery - I was distraught because I thought I'd never play well again. 

​​​​​​Sorry, that probably isn't much help, but I'm saying to your friend to give her brain the best chance to adjust to it. 

I know very little of the subject, but seeing a consultant level physician seems appropriate with a prognosis such as this. This might take some time in the current situation – nerve damage sounds very non-specific - is this a neck injury to be bilateral?
 

I dunno to be honest, I'll ask further. 

Vegans have recovered from all sorts of mechanical tissue injuries without eating loads of meat. 

You need to be more specific about where the pain is. Across the top of her arms is too nebulous.

It depends on the type of pain and length of time after the incident and other factors. For instance I did a similar thing some years back moving large stones on a cold winters day. I had pain for 6 months and near the same off work, had to lie on a hard board to sleep (bed being to soft and agony) and had sports physio (on the grounds that I reckoned sports physios had more idea about getting people fit than the general NHS ones who recomended acupuncture to me). It did eventually get better. My advice would be to seek out a good physio, one who understands all the various problems. I have rarely had good advice off doctors in regard to injuries as the 10 minute (5 minute?) sessions you get these days allow for only a cursory examination and they are not specialists.

https://www.hse.gov.uk/vibration/hav/yourhands.htm

Hand arm vibration is a common enough problem to get its own section on the hse website, so you should be able to Google a decent amount of info.

I had similar hand nerve symptoms whilst pregnant (which is a fairly common problem and can be added to the list of bizarre things that happen when pregnant that no one prepares you for) it resulted in me not be able to fully open and close my hands and as a result I dropped a new 4 pint milk bottle I was carrying into the house on the porch floor (it just kind of fell out of my hand), it exploded, the puppy then tried to 'help' clean it up, so he then vomited copious amounts of milk up outside the back door and it took weeks for me to get rid of the grim off milk smell in the porch .... Happy days!

I'll check out the link.

I'm no-one's idea of a neurologist but from basic anatomy and pathology it seems a bit odd to have bilateral nerve damage.  There are all sorts of ways of damaging brachial or cervical plexus nerves but by laying a few slabs and doing a bit of hammering it seems a bit far-fetched to have done anything permanent.

How long has this been going on?  I bet most people would have sore arms after doing this sort of thing if they weren't used to it.  

Yes of course, I'd omitted that she's had spells of fatigue and being found to be low in B vitamins in the past. 

That's my thoughts too. I found Duncan's experience interesting, I've had sore arms after doing path upkeep in nature reserves, from lifting heaving tools, but nothing which turned out to be problematic.