Bang My Funny Bone Really Hard
WHEN SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT...
Why Does Striking Your Funny Bone Injure And then Much?
February. 24, 2021
There are a few things about our bodies that, in ane way or another, can be considered funny.
Hearing someone express mirth tin brand you lot laugh. The comical sounds that sometimes come along with passing gas are funny. Someone being compelled to yawn after you yawn is sort of funny.
But what is basically never funny is your funny os — despite the fact that we've decided to coin it as such. Nosotros've all experienced the tingling, jolting pain that comes with hitting your funny os. It'south a dissimilar sort of pain, to be sure, but not pain that any of u.s. would consider funny.
And speaking of a different sort of hurting, why does hitting your elbow "merely hit so dissimilar?" Most similar your entire arm has been plunged into ice h2o and then electrocuted?
Funnily plenty, getting to the bottom of this strange, unpleasant awareness ends upward being easier to sympathize than trying to effigy out why your funny bone is even called your funny os in the offset identify.
Where is your funny bone?
Funny you should ask.
It turns out that your funny os isn't a bone. It's really a nerve — i that starts in your spine and travels from your neck, through your elbow and to your fingers (your pinky and ring fingers, to be exact). It'due south called the ulnar nerve. As i of the 3 primary nerves in your arm, the principal function of your ulnar nerve is to provide sensation in these fingertips, too every bit help the muscles in your hand coordinate fine movement and the muscles in your forearm command your grip.
Along its journeying from your spine to your fingers, your ulnar nerve is pretty well protected past muscle, fat and bone. Only there'southward one spot at your elbow where this nerve is unusually exposed, and that spot is called your funny os.
At this point in your arm, your ulnar nerve passes through your cubital tunnel, which runs underneath the little bony crash-land (called the medial epicondyle) on the within of the back of your elbow. Feel around, y'all tin probably find information technology.
Information technology's at this spot that your ulnar nerve is particularly vulnerable, peculiarly when your elbow is and aptitude and the nerve is protected by simply a minor layer of skin.
Why does hit your "funny bone" injure different?
Now that yous know your funny bone isn't really a bone — it'due south a vulnerable portion of a major nerve running through your arm — it's probably a little easier to empathise why hitting information technology in a certain style causes pain. When you hitting your funny os at simply the right angle, you're essentially squashing information technology into your medial epicondyle os. Ouch.
But why this hurting hits so different is interesting, also.
All sensations of pain are mediated by nerves, but there's a deviation between the perception of pain (nociceptive pain) and actual nerve pain.
When you stub your toe, slam your finger in a door or smack your caput, irritation and harm to your tissue triggers the surrounding nerves to coordinate nociceptive pain. These nerves inform your encephalon you're in pain — cue those precipitous or throbbing sensations. Moral of the story: Terminate doing the affair yous're doing, it's causing damage.
Nerve hurting is a flake different. The pain is still coordinated by a nerve, but the irritation or damage is occurring directly to the nerve itself. In addition, the pain feels different — more electrical, called-for or stinging.
In the case of hitting your funny bone, squashing your ulnar nervus into your medial epicondyle os is irritating. And y'all experience this nerve pain in the areas where your ulnar nerve provides sensation, resulting in an unpleasant, shocking sensation shooting down your forearm and into your fingers.
Fortunately, the hurting that comes with hit your funny bone is temporary. As soon every bit you shake things off, it'southward like nothing ever happened. No ice pack or bandaid needed.
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Source: https://www.houstonmethodist.org/blog/articles/2021/feb/why-does-hitting-your-funny-bone-hurt-so-much/