Carpal tunnel syndrome: What is it??
Sometimes the reason your hand is numb is that your wife is laying on it. Sometimes it is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
Hello, my beautiful people.
As you know, we are a medical practice that helps people who have been in pain a long time with problems that are just getting progressively worse..
Some of the conditions we help people with are back pain, neck pain, headaches, shoulder pain and pinched nerves.
We are going to be adding another very painful condition to that list called Carpal tunnel syndrome.
Let me tell you about it.
The carpal tunnel is a structure in the wrist that is made up of the wrist bones in the back that creates a curve to the front and a connective tissue sheet in front that closes the tunnel in front.
Think of it like this:
The wrist bones this side the connective tissue sheet in front that closes the tunnel.
Tendons that move your fingers and a nerve run through the tunnel.
As you can see from this picture there is not a lot of space where so many important structures for the hand need to run through. That is where the problem starts.
What happens in the carpal tunnel is that the nerve that runs through the tunnel gets compressed by the structures in the tunnel. Structures like the tendons that move the hand and fingers. Even a small amount of swelling of a tendon will decrease the available space for everything else.
This compresses everything around it.
That is what leads to a pinched nerve in the wrist.
A nerve works as a water horse. When it gets compressed the water, which is the signals, cannot get through, or only a few go through. This causes pain, pins and needles, numbness, and weakness in the hand.
If the signals cannot grow through the muscles are not told what to do.
The nerves in the hands cannot tell you what you are feeling, and this.
shows up as numbness.
Therefore, people with this problem talk about how painful their hands are. It feels like they are numb but on fire at the same time. Just think in a day how often you use your hands? If every time you typed an email, brushed your daughter’s hair and you felt that your hands were on fire with pain? How well would you cope?
When there is numbness and weakness in the hands, we must also look to see if there is a problem coming from the nerves in the neck. As you know nerves that go down the arms starts in the neck. If there is a problem with the hands that feels like a nerve issue you cannot leave out the neck.
This kind of problem rarely gets better on its own. I cannot think of a person whose carpal tunnel syndrome went away on its own just by resting. It always to gets progressively worse.
That is why getting the right help sooner rather than later is the best option.
As waiting for things to get better usually only leads to more time for things to get worse.
Think of the last time you left a problem unattended? Did that pile of dishes wash or did they start to stink?
Do not wait any longer.
Jason
