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Do you remember a time, years ago, when the only time you even noticed any sensation in your hands was when you hurt a finger or they got really cold? That’s the way your hands should be.
How are your hands now? Maybe you just have tingling once in a while, OR maybe you get numb fingers when you comb your hair or ride a bicycle OR maybe you mostly get numbness at night maybe causing you to lose sleep. Maybe they hurt. Perhaps you drop things or find it difficlult to use keys.
Maybe you’ve already given up activities you love. Maybe you have to hold dishes in two hands for fear of dropping them. Or maybe you’re scared about the future.
Now imagine, if you don’t do anything to help yourself, how they will be two years from now, five years from now, ten years from now.
What would happen if you couldn’t use your hands for anything? Do you think your problem will just go away? Think again. Or maybe you think you will wait until you need to have surgery. Bad idea. Why? I’ll talk about this later but surgery is risky and has a high failure rate. And even when successful, your carpal tunnel syndrome often comes back years later.
YOU can avoid surgery and get your hands back to normal. Besides that, most of the time it isn’t even carpal tunnel syndrome that is causing your problem. (Even if a nerve conductivity test says it is).
You do not need…. Pills …. Shots …. Braces ….. Gadgets …. Gizmos …. Surgery…. Office Visits.
The common treatment is anti-inflammatory drugs. Knowledgeable doctors now know they not only are not effective, they actually block the body’s natural healing process.
Why Anti-inflammatory Drugs Are Horrible for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome The nine tendons that go through you carpal tunnel of your wrist are each in a hollow tube (called a sheath) can swell up when irritated. This is mostly because the fluid that lubricates them can dry up when repeated movement of the fingers makes the tendon go back and forth, back and forth inside that hollow tube. Pieces of the tendon and tendon sheath scrape off, causing more irritation in the tendon. This signals your body’s immune system to send in fluid with special remarkable cells called macrophages. These guys can squeeze in and out of just about anywhere. What they do is gobble anything that doesn’t belong there — whether it is bad bacteria, dead cells, or even little pieces of metal. When you take anti-inflammatory drugs, it is like turning the engine warning light off in your car. The macrophages don’t get the warning alarm that there is a problem. So that gunk accumulates in your tendon sheaths. In the the short term drugs make you feel better. In the long run it will make your problem worse. Some doctors know this. But unfortunately hoards of doctors still prescribe these drugs even though there is no evidence that they are effective in treating carpal tunnel syndrome. The use of drugs for carpal tunnel syndrome is old school literature (which unfortunately gets copied and sent all over the internet). If you need temporary relief, use ice or cold (just not while you are using your hands for work). Ice promotes the healing process. Drugs do not.
They prescribe night splints. While most people find it helpful to relieve the numbness or pain at night – and it can be a very good idea for many people to use them – they aren’t actively helping you to get better.
You may think you’re getting better because you can sleep at night. But your problem is very likely getting worse.
In fact, if night splints do make you feel better, the real cause of the problem is muscle imbalance in your forearms. Most medical doctors are not trained to recognise this.
Next is cortisone shots. This is often a temporary fix. Cortisone is very powerful. The majority of doctor’s won’t give a cortisone shot more than once (some doctors up to three times) in the same place in a lifetime – because it can break down muscle, tendons, and even bone and cause permanent damage.
Numbness in the fingers is caused by pinching of one or more of three nerves. These nerves run from the base of the neck, then to the front of the neck, then the upper chest, under your armpit and down your arm.
There are several areas along that path where the nerves can be pinched. It is almost always caused by muscle imbalance.
Physical therapists are aware of the mischief caused muscle imbalance. Or at least they should be.
You see sometimes people experience little or no results with physical therapy, not because physical therapy doesn’t work, but because of the particular physical therapist not being clued in to what the real problem was.
Does that happen? You bet. I’ve had clients who had gone to physical therapy for weeks or months without any improvement. Why? Because they were given stretches and exercises for the WRONG muscles. Isn’t that unbelievable?
Are there Physical Therapists who can help? Of course. And most of them use hands on techniques. Not just stretches and exercises.
(I include stretches too, but they are not part of my Core Program – which shows you how to find and work directly on the problem, for fast results).
Then there is surgery. Surgery should always be a last resort. It may be necessary if you have let the condition go so long that you are in danger of permanent loss of function.
But surgery has a high failure rate with carpal tunnel. Admittedly some clinics have a higher success rate than the national average.
But about one third of the time there are mixed results. The pain may be gone. But the hand is left weaker or can not function as…
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Self Treatment
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