How Specific Chiropractic Care Can Help
If placing your hands back to back produces an increase in numbness tingling or pain, you could have a carpal tunnel problem. Have someone try to pull your thumb and first finger apart. If your fingers are weak, it may be due to a carpal tunnel problem. Carpal tunnel is not whole hand numbness. Carpal tunnel is numbness and/or weakness of the thumb and first two fingers and part of the third finger.
Specific tests may be performed to see if spinal nerves are involved. As the nerve involved with carpal tunnel pass through the “carpal tunnel”, cross the elbow, pass through the shoulder and exit the spine in the lower neck area, all of these regions should be evaluated for symptoms of numbness/weakness of the hands.
Specific chiropractic adjustments can help return these same malfunctioning joints to a more normal motion and position. The major nerve controlling the thumb, index, and parts of the middle, and ring finger is called the median nerve. The median nerve travels from your neck, through the shoulder in an area called the thoracic outlet, past your elbow, through the writst and to the tips of your fingers. When true carpal tunnel occurs it is because the canal formed by the carpal bones and the sheath over the bones are not allowing the median nerve, tendons of the forearm and blood vessels to pass through the can to the fingers. Inflammation and nerve pressure make the fingers painful, numb and/or weak.
After a thorough examination, our doctors of chiropractic can perform specific adjustments where needed, helping normalize structures and reducing nerve irritation. With consistent treatment over time, conservative chiropractic care produces excellent results with carpal tunnel problems—- without drugs or surgery.
Repetitive hand and wrist motion
Every day, assembly line workers, keyboard operators, grocery store clerks, and many others, receive micro-traumas to their hands and wrists. Vibration and repetitive motions, when combined with spinal problems and other joint dysfunction, can result in a condition known as carpal tunnel syndrome.
Symptoms may include pain, numbness, tingling, weakness, or a loss of strength in the hands.
Carpal Tunnel syndrome can be caused by the cumulative damage of repetitive wrist and hand motions.
