What Causes Your Funny Bone to Hurt
WHEN SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT...
Why Does Hitting Your Funny Bone Hurt And so Much?
Feb. 24, 2021
There are a few things about our bodies that, in i way or another, can be considered funny.
Hearing someone laugh can make you laugh. The comical sounds that sometimes come forth with passing gas are funny. Someone existence compelled to yawn after you yawn is sort of funny.
Simply what is basically never funny is your funny os — despite the fact that nosotros've decided to coin it equally such. We've all experienced the tingling, jolting hurting that comes with hitting your funny os. It's a unlike sort of pain, to be certain, just not hurting that any of us would consider funny.
And speaking of a dissimilar sort of pain, why does hit your elbow "just hitting so unlike?" Well-nigh like your entire arm has been plunged into water ice water and so electrocuted?
Funnily plenty, getting to the bottom of this strange, unpleasant sensation ends upward being easier to understand than trying to effigy 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'southward actually a nervus — one that starts in your spine and travels from your neck, through your elbow and to your fingers (your pinky and band fingers, to exist verbal). It'southward called the ulnar nervus. As i of the three primary fretfulness in your arm, the main role of your ulnar nerve is to provide sensation in these fingertips, as well as help the muscles in your hand coordinate fine motion 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 os. But there'south 1 spot at your elbow where this nerve is unusually exposed, and that spot is called your funny bone.
At this betoken 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 inside of the back of your elbow. Feel effectually, y'all can probably notice it.
It's at this spot that your ulnar nerve is particularly vulnerable, especially when your elbow is and bent and the nerve is protected by only a pocket-sized layer of skin.
Why does striking your "funny os" hurt different?
Now that you know your funny os isn't really a bone — information technology'southward a vulnerable portion of a major nerve running through your arm — information technology's probably a niggling easier to understand why hit it in a certain way causes pain. When you hit your funny bone at just the right angle, you're essentially squashing it into your medial epicondyle bone. Ouch.
But why this pain hits so different is interesting, besides.
All sensations of pain are mediated by nerves, but there'due south a difference between the perception of pain (nociceptive pain) and actual nerve pain.
When yous stub your toe, slam your finger in a door or smack your head, irritation and harm to your tissue triggers the surrounding nerves to coordinate nociceptive hurting. These nerves inform your brain you're in pain — cue those sharp or throbbing sensations. Moral of the story: Stop doing the thing y'all're doing, information technology's causing damage.
Nerve hurting is a bit unlike. The hurting is still coordinated past a nerve, but the irritation or damage is occurring direct to the nerve itself. In addition, the pain feels unlike — more electrical, burning or stinging.
In the case of hitting your funny bone, squashing your ulnar nerve into your medial epicondyle os is irritating. And you lot feel this nervus 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 pain that comes with hit your funny os is temporary. As soon equally you shake things off, it's like nothing always happened. No water 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/