Does Pain in Left Arm Mean Stroke?

Pain in your arms can mean a million things.

As a shoulder specialist, I see a ton of people with pain in their arm that, from the shoulder radiating down the arm, can be a pinched nerve in your neck.

Strokes typically don’t cause much pain going down the arms when they can, but most times you just see acute onset weakness. You also sometimes see facial palsy, but strokes can present in a lot of different ways. You can just get dizziness, nausea, and a headache.

So if you get any acute symptoms where neurologically you’re not feeling right, whether you’re dizzy, you have an acute headache, you’re not seeing straight, or anything like that, where just like your senses have changed acutely in any way, you need to go into the ER immediately to make sure that you get evaluated with either a CT scan or, typically, an MRI to get your brain evaluated. Strokes can be sneaky.