Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Other Repetitive Motion Injuries
Do you spend long hours at a computer terminal, work on an assembly line, use your hands or wrists repetitively, or maybe play a musical instrument for hours a day? If you perform the same movement day after day, you may be setting yourself up for repetitive motion injury.
No age group is immune. In fact, even children who play computer or video games for long stretches at a time are at risk. Cake decorators, postal workers, dentists and dental technicians, typists, people with square wrists (width the same as thickness) are all at risk. The sad part is that in many cases, symptoms first occur outside of work so people may fail to associate the symptoms with work-related activity and therefore not make the necessary adjustments to minimize pain and further injury.
Symptoms may initially seem subtle but if you ignore them, matters usually go from bad to worse. Symptoms include tingling, aching sharp pain, swelling and stiffness, weakness, and clumsiness. In the case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, a sense of weakness and a tendency to drop things may occur along with a lost sense of heat or cold, a feeling that the hands are swollen when they are not, persistent pain, numbness, tingling, and weakness of the hand are the most common symptoms. If left untreated, carpal tunnel muscles at the base of the thumb may atrophy and sensation may be permanently lost.
The pain of a repetitive motion injury may appear to sneak up on you. You’ll be doing a job or activity you have done many times before and suddenly it hits you that it hurts every time you do it whether it is typing, manipulating a tool, or lifting.
Toughing it out is a very bad idea. In activities requiring repetitive wrist motion or strained wrist positions, the swollen median nerve located in the carpal tunnel is irritated. It may be that there is a slight irritation of this median nerve where it originates between the vertebrae in the lower part of the neck. This can be treated with gentle spinal adjustments to free the irritated nerve and its point of origin in the neck. Chiropractic gets to the Cause for a healthy lifestyle! Call today and let’s see if we can help you with your repetitive motion injury!
