Lifetime fitness Home

What Treatment Are Considerable For Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?

Posted by Tom Nicholson in Health and fitness on 11 4th, 2009 | no responses

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome can cause great pain and interfere with your life and productivity. Its effects can range from mildly irritating wrist, hand, and finger tingling that needs to be constantly shaken out to severe pain and partial debilitation of the hand. CTS can virtually always be treated, but that doesn’t mean that the treatment is necessarily easy or desirable.

Many different ways exist of treating carpal tunnel syndrome. They depend partially on how severe your condition is and partially on what happens to work best for you. In the majority of cases, the first thing that gets recommended is that you put on a wrist brace to immobilize the movement of the wrist’s ligaments so that they don’t deteriorate with more repeated movements. But the brace is almost always worn only at night during sleep. The hand is left free for use during the day, but it’s recommended that the hand’s normal range of activity be curtailed as much as possible. This can even extend to not using the dominant hand, if that’s the injured one, to open the door, brush your teeth, and do all of the little routine things that you do without thinking. This can make for some clumsiness but is supposed to help with the healing.

In most cases, the brace is worn for about two weeks, and the treatment can be combined with use of anti-inflammatories like aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, or naproxen sodium. One company has also developed a device that is purportedly similar to the standard brace but is more flexible and fits better. It also gently pulls on the swollen inflamed areas so that the pressure on the median nerve is reduced and therefore symptoms are also reduced.

If you type or keyboard a lot in your life (whether for work or for leisure), it’s recommended that you get an ergonomic keyboard so that your hands are in better alignment and there’s less strain. Also always make sure that your hands are aligned parallel to the floor when you’re typing. A wrist pad can help with this alignment. Finally, take a 10-minute break every hour to take a walk and massage hands and wrists so that symptoms are reduced or eliminated.

If you follow these methods of treatment (including use of over-the-counter anti-inflammatories as applicable) and you still have carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms, your doctor may be able to prescribe stronger medications that are corticosteroids. You cannot buy these over the counter and they also do have side effects. If you’ve come to this point, you may want to look into other treatments that are available for carpal tunnel syndrome as well. Chiropractic medicine may be able to help, with treatments such as joint and spinal manipulation and ultrasound. Acupuncture, too, is often effective with carpal tunnel syndrome, although acupuncture also usually includes dietary changes and herbal treatments. With acupuncture, traditional needles or laser application may be used.

If you’ve tried all of these methods and nothing has seemed to work for long, your doctor may recommend surgery. If this is shown to be the best method for you, your doctor may recommend endoscopic surgery or traditional surgery. Endoscopic surgery has the advantage of being less invasive than traditional surgery, with a shorter recovery. With either type of surgery, the transverse carpal nerve is cut in order to relieve symptoms. This certainly should not affect the use of your hands either in terms of mobility or strength, but you can and probably will have at least minimal scarring. You’ll also have some temporary swelling and pain immediately after the surgery that will diminish quite quickly. And of course, as with any surgery, there are risks, including nerve damage that may result from the surgery itself.

But what might be the best way for every individual to prevent CTS is to do special exercises designed to treat it and prevent it. These involve no drugs, they are always non-invasive, and they are inexpensive and convenient. They should probably be into before anything else.

Trying these easy carpal tunnel exercises, as provided by Thom Nicholson (noted CTS Guru), can help you avoid surgery and reduce the pain caused by Carpal Tunnel Syndrome without invasive surgery. Help your body heal itself!