Your Funny Bone Is Actually This Nerve
WHEN SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT...
Why Does Hitting Your Funny Bone Hurt So Much?
Feb. 24, 2021
There are a few things well-nigh our bodies that, in one fashion or another, tin be considered funny.
Hearing someone laugh can brand you 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.
Just what is basically never funny is your funny os — despite the fact that we've decided to coin it every bit such. Nosotros've all experienced the tingling, jolting pain that comes with hitting your funny os. Information technology'southward a dissimilar sort of pain, to exist sure, but not pain that any of united states would consider funny.
And speaking of a different sort of pain, why does hitting your elbow "only hit so different?" About like your entire arm has been plunged into ice water and and so electrocuted?
Funnily enough, getting to the bottom of this strange, unpleasant sensation ends up being easier to understand than trying to figure out why your funny os is even called your funny bone in the first place.
Where is your funny bone?
Funny you should ask.
It turns out that your funny bone isn't a bone. It'south actually 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's called the ulnar nerve. As ane of the three primary nerves in your arm, the main part of your ulnar nervus is to provide sensation in these fingertips, also equally aid the muscles in your mitt coordinate fine movement and the muscles in your forearm control your grip.
Along its journey from your spine to your fingers, your ulnar nerve is pretty well protected by muscle, fatty and bone. But there's one spot at your elbow where this nerve is unusually exposed, and that spot is called your funny os.
At this betoken in your arm, your ulnar nerve passes through your cubital tunnel, which runs underneath the lilliputian bony bump (called the medial epicondyle) on the inside of the dorsum of your elbow. Feel around, you can probably find it.
It's at this spot that your ulnar nervus is particularly vulnerable, especially when your elbow is and bent and the nervus is protected by only a small-scale layer of skin.
Why does hit your "funny bone" hurt dissimilar?
Now that you know your funny bone isn't actually a bone — it'southward a vulnerable portion of a major nerve running through your arm — information technology'southward probably a little easier to sympathize why hit it in a certain style causes pain. When you hit your funny bone at only the correct angle, you're substantially squashing information technology into your medial epicondyle bone. Ouch.
But why this pain hits so unlike is interesting, also.
All sensations of pain are mediated by fretfulness, just there'southward a deviation between the perception of pain (nociceptive pain) and actual nerve pain.
When y'all stub your toe, slam your finger in a door or smack your head, irritation and damage to your tissue triggers the surrounding fretfulness to coordinate nociceptive pain. These nerves inform your encephalon y'all're in hurting — cue those sharp or throbbing sensations. Moral of the story: Stop doing the thing you're doing, it's causing impairment.
Nerve hurting is a bit different. The pain is still coordinated by a nerve, merely the irritation or damage is occurring directly to the nerve itself. In addition, the hurting feels unlike — more electric, burning or stinging.
In the case of hitting your funny bone, squashing your ulnar nerve into your medial epicondyle os is irritating. And yous experience this nervus hurting in the areas where your ulnar nervus provides sensation, resulting in an unpleasant, shocking awareness shooting down your forearm and into your fingers.
Fortunately, the pain that comes with hit your funny bone is temporary. As shortly as you shake things off, it's like nil 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/
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