In my experience, if this pain is nerve root pain from your
neck, it may do no good to try and treat your hand or arm where you feel the
pain, and OTC
pain meds might not help as much as one would hope. Try applying ice or moist heat or both to your neck, instead, to see if this lessens the pain in your arm. I've also found that regular X-rays do not always show a herniated disk, but that an MRI is sometimes required.