car·pal tun·nel syn·drome
A painful condition of the hand and fingers caused by compression of a major nerve where it passes over the carpal bones through a passage at the front of the wrist, alongside the flexor tendons of the hand. It may be caused by repetitive movements over a long period, or by fluid retention, and is characterized by sensations of tingling, numbness, or burning.
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People with carpal tunnel syndrome often experience numbness, tingling, and a dull aching pain in the hands, in particular the index, middle and ring fingers. This numbness and lack of circulation often leads to pain in the wrists and / or hands and loss of grip strength.
In this blog post you’re going to learn some simple stretches and exercises that you can do at home to help treat carpal tunnel syndrome. I’ve been using these exercises myself for the past several years and they helped me to keep my CTS under control without having to resort to taking pain medication or getting surgery on my wrists.
The main thing that you need to do is stretch out your hands and wrists daily, even several times per day. This will help open up the transverse carpal ligament. This is the band across your wrist that holds the tendons in place.
When the carpal ligament gets tight it pinches the median nerve and this limits the circulation to your fingers which causes that numb ache pain in your hands. Now the typical treatment for this is surgery and literally cutting the carpel ligament open. But the recovery from such surgery is long and tedious. Can you imagine living without the use of your hands for several weeks? That’s basically what it’s like recovering from carpal tunnel surgery.
I’d much rather take a couple minutes a day to do some simple stretches and exercises which will help with your overall hand health and mobility, rather than go through painful surgery and a long recovery process.
Just watch the video clip below to see the stretches and exercises that you can perform to help eliminate the pain of carpal tunnel syndrome. After you watch the video if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them in the comments section below and I’ll chat with you there.
Click PLAY To Watch The Video:
NOTE: If you can’t see the embedded video clip above,
you can watch it on YouTube by Clicking Here
7 Comments
Zeeshan
This is a great video Lee.
I’ve been following your workout & other misc. videos since 2yrs and i’ve learned a lot from ya 🙂
You are really an amazing bodybuilding coach!
I wish you were my trainer in the gym where i go.
After Arnold Schwarzenegger, you are my idol fitness coach from whom i’ve been inspired..
With great respect and warm regards,
Zeeshan
Thank you! 🙂
Dave Stone
Carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms are NOT the result of a circulation problem; its a nerve compression problem. There are no blood vessels that go through the carpal tunnel. Night symptoms are caused by flexion or extension of the wrists while we sleep, these motions make the carpal tunnel smaller (gives the nerve less room). Forearm stretches are fine, but many may actually make symptoms worse. The best night time treatment for mild carpal tunnel symptoms are wrist splints to wear at night, which keep the wrists straight, limiting nerve compression. If stretches do not work, try wrist splints while you sleep.
Bandar Hawsawi
Wow… Lee !
You know what I’ve been suffering of Numbness while sleeping over a year. I’ve seen many neurology doctors and have done many test every time the doctor says” you don’t have any problem you are fine” that get me crazy because I know there is a problem but I don’t know what is it or how to deal with it till I gave up looking for answer. In fact, still suffering of this problem, what I wanna say is thank you very much for posting this video and I will take your advice and hope its work.
Bandar Hawsawi
Dave Stone,
In fact, my primary doctor recommend me to wear ”wrist splints” but unfortunately didn’t work.
Elizabeth Franklin
I am afraid that I have such syndrome too, does Carpal Tunnel Syndrome have something to do with shaky hands?… I mean, I use to draw and many times when I am inking the drawing my hands gets shaky and the ink go off the line where it supposed to be in. If it has nothing to do with this carpal tunnel syndrome, do you have any exercise to prevent shaky hands?… Honestly, thanks for your post, I will do this and share it to my friends.
Jim
As a warmup for doing Tai Chi, I already use some of the exercises you show. But the one with the powder container (fill it halfway with sand, stick the hand in and lift; switch hands, repeat; …) is impressively cool. As soon as my wife finishes up her gluten-free flour, which comes in such a container, it’s out to the sandpile (I’m sure we have one somewhere) to fill it up, and on to that exercise.
Markku
I have found that powerball is a very effective tool to prevent carpal tunnel. I had a chronic elbow pain that affected lifting.. I couldn’t do bicep curls without a lot of pain. The problem cured itself when I used a powerball for a couple of months.