Originally Posted by maineiac Originally Posted by

AZ, I'm a nurse practitioner. Not an MD, but I did work as an ortho/ortho surg nurse before becoming an NP.



It sounds like you have a nerve impingement/nerve irritation of the musculocutaneous nerve of your arm. It can't be your ulnar nerve since if that were pinched at the elbow you'd be getting forearm pain and your ring finger/pinky on that hand would be going numb. You likely are compressing the nerve due to hypertrophy of your biceps, as that's the most common cause of it if someone is a weight lifter (I'm assuming you aren't using a backpack or anything like that). The nerve runs from your pectorals through the shoulder and down into the arm, so moving those areas will irritate it. I'd avoid doing hammer curls and anything else that aggravates it for now. avoiding biceps exercises in general for 1-2 weeks would actually be most beneficial for it to heal up.



In addition to rest, you can do some other stuff to help get the inflammation down. If your kidney function is fine, ibuprofen or naproxen (both over the counter) will get inflammation down. Don't take both, obviously. Ibuprofen can be taken up to 800mg (4 Advil) every 6-8 hours, and with these types of injuries I usually have patients take it regardless if they have the pain or not for about a week or two to get the inflammation down. The other things that will help are what we call RICE, or rest/ice/compression/elevation. I'd ice it 4x a day using a bag of frozen peas/vegetables. I prefer these to cold packs as my sports medicine professor thought they were far superior for a couple reasons: one, it can mold to the area, and two it will thaw quicker than a cold pack, thus preventing frostbite and a reflex dilation of your arteries causing more swelling to the area. Usually 20 minutes is enough 4x a day. I'd ice your bicep PLUS your shoulder (try and mold it from front to back on the shoulder) to help get some of the swelling of the joint capsule down. Compression of the shoulder joint is difficult, but you can apply an ACE wrap to your bicep which will speed up healing too. Make sure you wrap from the elbow up to the shoulder and not the other way around as you want to wrap in the direction the veins are returning blood to your heart. And as for the elevation bit, elevating it on a pillow at night while you sleep is a good idea, unless it provokes pain in which case don't as it could irritate the shoulder joint more, but that's fairly unlikely. While awake elevating it can help too if you're able to get it above the level of your heart. You shouldn't need months of rest for this, a few weeks and some NSAIDs should be enough. If it continues worsening a burst of prednisone can help.