Prevention And Treatment Of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
- Jeremy Tarwater PT, DPT
- Oct 31, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated October 15th, 2022
Introduction
Chances are that you have probably heard of carpal tunnel syndrome. In fact, 4-10 million Americans are affected by it each year (1). That’s a lot of Americans if you ask me!! The “carpal tunnel” is basically a small area where the median nerve travels through your wrist and into your hand. Don’t worry fellow nerds, I will go into more depth in the next section.
Carpal tunnel syndrome is a blockage or pinching of this nerve that can cause tightness, numbness, tingling, and other symptoms in the wrist and hand. This issue is usually caused by repetitive motions and is accelerated by high impact movements.
Anatomy
As shown above, the median nerve branches off of several other nerves that stem from the spine. The carpal tunnel is the area of the wrist where the nerve passes above the carpal bones and below the ligaments. As you can see, this area isn’t very big to begin with. So repetitive gripping and lifting can cause this tunnel to shrink. Then if you add some inflammation into the mix, symptoms can worsen.
Repetitive Motions
Common jobs that require these dangerous repetitive motions are:
Construction or other manual labor
Desk work with a computer
Factory workers that don’t switch roles frequently
Product distributors
Shelf stockers
All of these jobs and many more require repetitive movements throughout the entire shift. Most of these workers are not stretching between activities or receiving time to let their body rest. Although the resting time may not change for most people, adding some stretching throughout the day can help prolong your career and prevent an injury.
Improving Form
Not only is repetitive movement tough on your body, lifting and carrying with poor form can exacerbate the problem. For a real world example, think about the tires on your car. Once we get new tires, it is a requirement for us to get an alignment. This alignment helps pressure distribute evenly through all four tires as we drive. If we don’t get the alignment done our tires are utilized in an uneven manner. This usually causes one or a few tires to wear down quicker than the others.
So what does this mean for your body? If we are repetitively lifting with poor alignment and poor mechanics, our body also wears down in an uneven manner. This is where we start to get shoulder, knee, or wrist pain just on one side of our body. Then we start to compensate with the rest of our body, causing soreness elsewhere as well. Take a look at my video below to see how you can lift with proper form and avoid the beginning or worsening of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Important Exercises
Shown below are some important stretches and exercises for you to perform both during the day and after work. It is important to warm the body up prior to lifting, as well as maintaining alignment and stability throughout the day.
Conclusion
Since carpal tunnel syndrome is so common, there is also a high percentage of people who get surgery to release it. The surgery tends to have a high success rate (90%), which is better than most other surgeries being performed today (2). I believe that the best option is to prevent injury and surgery in the first place. But if your injury gets to the point of surgery, the videos and suggestions above will still apply to you both before and after you get it done. A surgery won’t fix your poor lifting habits or movement patterns. Give some of these stretches and changes a try to see if they can help you as well.
References
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. www.rheumatology.org. Accessed October 15, 2022. https://www.rheumatology.org/I-Am-A/Patient-Caregiver/Diseases-Conditions/Carpal-Tunnel-Syndrome#:~:text=It%20affects%204%20%E2%80%93%2010%20million%20Americans%20and%20is%20usually%20very%20treatable.
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: Risk Factors, Symptoms & Treatment. Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/4005-carpal-tunnel-syndrome#:~:text=Surgery%20for%20carpal%20tunnel%20syndrome
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Last updated April 24, 2022
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