It usually starts at night. Two in the morning rolls around and your hand has gone dead, mostly the thumb and the next two fingers. So you dangle it off the edge of the mattress and flap it around until the pins and needles fade. Pretty soon it isn’t just a nighttime thing. Your fingers go fuzzy holding a paperback, or halfway through the drive to work.
That pattern is classic carpal tunnel syndrome. It’s one of the most common things we see in hand therapy, and most people get real relief without surgery.
What’s Going On in Your Wrist
Flip your hand over and look at where your wrist creases. Right under there is a little tunnel, walled in by bone on three sides and a thick band of tissue across the top. One nerve squeezes through it, plus nine tendons that curl your fingers. It’s crowded on a good day. Bend the wrist for an hour, or let those tendons get puffy, and the nerve takes the hit. Since that nerve handles feeling for the thumb side of the hand, your pinky usually stays out of it.
What Tends to Make It Worse
Most people can’t point to one cause. It’s more of a pile-up. A few common ones:
- Long hours of typing, sewing, or using a mouse
- Gripping tools or anything that vibrates
- Falling asleep with your fists tucked up under your chin
- Things like pregnancy, diabetes, or an underactive thyroid
How Hand Therapy Helps
Expect a few questions about which fingers go numb, and whether it’s worse at night or at your desk. You’ll squeeze a grip meter, pinch a little gauge, and let us touch your fingertips to see how much you can feel. We check your neck as well, because a pinched nerve up there can fool people.
Often the very first step is a night splint. It keeps your wrist straight while you sleep, which takes pressure off the nerve during the hours it tends to complain the most. Plenty of people sleep better within the first week or two.
From there, you’ll learn nerve and tendon glides. These are slow, gentle hand movements that help the nerve and tendons slide through the tunnel instead of rubbing. We’ll poke into your daily routine too. Maybe the keyboard sits two inches too high, or you hold your garden shears in a death grip. Fixing that stuff, along with a quick stretch break every thirty minutes, helps more than most people would guess.
When Surgery Comes Up
If your thumb muscles are getting weak or wasting away, or the numbness never lets up, the nerve may be under too much pressure for therapy alone. In that case, we’ll talk with you about seeing a surgeon. Hand therapy also helps a lot after carpal tunnel surgery.
If your fingers have been going numb, come see us at Modern Medicine of Peoria, AZ. We’ll find out what’s pressing on that nerve and help you get some feeling back.
