Is Your Nerve Pain Trying to Tell You Something? What an EMG Test Can Reveal

A burning foot. Fingers that keep going numb. A shooting sensation down your leg. Weakness in a hand that suddenly makes opening jars more difficult.

Nerve symptoms can show up in many ways, but they don’t always tell you where the problem actually begins.

Is a nerve compressed in your wrist? Irritated as it leaves your spine? Has an underlying condition damaged multiple nerves? Or is the problem coming from the muscle itself?

At Advanced Medical Care, our board-certified neurologists use electromyography, commonly called an EMG, along with other diagnostic tools to help answer those questions and get to the source of your symptoms.

What exactly is an EMG?

Your nerves and muscles constantly communicate through tiny electrical signals.

When you decide to move your hand, for example, your nervous system sends electrical messages through your nerves that tell the appropriate muscles to contract. When something disrupts that communication, the electrical activity may change in ways an EMG can detect.

An EMG measures the electrical activity in specific muscles, both while they’re at rest and while you use them. Those patterns give us valuable information about how well your muscles and the nerves controlling them are working.

What happens during the test?

Our neurologists often pair an EMG with a nerve conduction study because the two tests provide different pieces of the same puzzle.

During a nerve conduction study, we place small electrodes on your skin and deliver brief electrical impulses to measure how quickly and effectively signals travel through specific nerves.

For the EMG portion, we place a very thin needle electrode into selected muscles. The electrode doesn’t send electricity into your muscle. Instead, it records electrical activity, much like a tiny microphone listening to the signals your muscles produce.

You simply relax and contract specific muscles while the equipment records the electrical activity of those muscles.

You may experience brief discomfort during the test, and the tested muscles may feel a little tender afterward, but EMG testing is generally safe, and complications are rare.

What can an EMG uncover?

An EMG helps us determine whether your symptoms involve a nerve, a muscle, or the communication between them. We may recommend testing when you have persistent numbness, tingling, burning, muscle weakness, or radiating pain.

EMG and nerve conduction testing can help evaluate conditions such as:

• Peripheral neuropathy from diabetes, vitamin deficiencies, and other causes
• Carpal tunnel syndrome and other compressed or trapped nerves
• Radiculopathy, pinched nerves in the neck or lower back that cause symptoms in an arm or leg
• Muscle disorders that affect strength and function
• Certain conditions affecting the connection between nerves and muscles

An EMG can also help determine the location and extent of nerve or muscle damage, which may influence your treatment plan.

Why finding the source matters

Imagine you’re experiencing tingling and weakness in your hand.

Those symptoms could come from a compressed nerve at your wrist, a problem further up your arm, or irritation of a nerve root in your neck. The symptoms may feel similar, but the treatments can be very different.

That’s where an EMG becomes especially useful.

The test doesn’t usually provide a diagnosis on its own. Instead, our neurology team combines the findings with your symptoms, medical history, neurological exam, and other testing when necessary to build a clearer picture of what’s happening.

How our neurologists can help

Our comprehensive neurology services include detailed consultations and advanced in-office diagnostic testing, including EMG and nerve conduction studies. We evaluate conditions such as neuropathy, nerve compression, and other disorders involving the brain, spine, nerves, and muscles.

Once we identify the likely source of your symptoms, we can create an individualized treatment plan based on your diagnosis, medical history, and goals. As a multispecialty practice, we can also coordinate care with services such as physical therapy when your treatment plan calls for broader support.

If burning, tingling, numbness, radiating pain, or unexplained weakness keeps bothering you, don’t simply learn to live with it. Schedule a neurological evaluation at Advanced Medical Care in Queens or Brooklyn, New York, or book online. An EMG may help us understand what your nerves are trying to tell you and point us toward the right next step.