Simple Carpal Tunnel Exercises

In preventing carpal tunnel syndrome to worsen, there should be necessary measures to be taken. Surgery should not be the immediate remedy because it is not a grave major disorder. However, it should not be the reason for it to be ignored. Remember that this involves a very essential part of your body, so it should be dealt with utmost consideration.

Keeping your wrists strong and flexible can alleviate strain on the carpal tunnel. It is by stretching your wrists often during the day that will help prevent injury. Doing carpal tunnel exercises reduces the amount of pressure on the median nerve in the carpal tunnel and prevents injury.

Here are carpal tunnel exercises that can be made on the comforts of your own office chair. These should be done by individuals who execute hand-intensive jobs.

Carpal tunnel exercises should be performed at the start of each workday and during a break carried out three to five times a week. Discussed below are also few reminders on how to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome.

1. Limbering Up
Massage the inside and outside of hand with thumb and fingers. Grasp the fingers and gently bend back wrist. Hold for five seconds. Gently pull thumb down and back until you feel the stretch. Hold for five seconds. Clench fist tightly, then release to fan out fingers. Repeat five times.

2. Wrist Rotation
Stand or sit with your elbows close to your waist, your forearms extended in front of you and parallel to the floor with your palms facing down. Make fists with both hands and make circles with your fists in one direction. Do 10 repetitions then reverse the direction. Next, open your hands, extend your fingers and repeat the entire sequence.

3. Wrist Curl
Stand or sit with your elbows close to your waist, your forearms extended in front of you and parallel to the floor with your palms facing down. Grasp a one-pound dumbbell in each hand and slowly bend your wrists down, holding for five seconds. Do 10 repetitions. If you do not have dumbbell, you can utilize a 16 ounce soft- drink bottle or a can of food.

4. Sideways Wrist Bend
Stand or sit with your elbows close to your waist, your forearms extended in front of you and parallel to the floor with your palms facing down. Grasp a one-pound dumbbell in each hand. Keeping your forearms still, slowly bend your wrists from side to side, moving the weights toward then away from one another in a windshield wiper-like motion. Do 10 repetitions.

5. Wrist Twist
Stand or sit with your elbows close to your waist, your forearms extended in front of you and parallel to the floor with your palms down. Grasp a one-pound dumbbell in each hand and slowly turn your wrists and forearms until your palms are facing up then turn them down again. Do 10 repetitions.

This set of  carpal tunnel exercises is very much recommended by orthopedic doctors because it is in its pure natural form. It does not have any side- effects whatsoever. So help yourself to avoid surgery as long as possible with carpal tunnel exercises.

The video below is a little long, but gives a lot of information.

An Introduction to the Carpal Tunnel

In the human wrist there is a sheath of tough connective tissue which envelopes and protects one nerve, median and tendons. It is attached to the muscles, wrist and hand bones. It is called the carpal tunnel which is the space between the sheath above and the bones below making up the wrist and hand.

The term carpal tunnel is also used quite commonly to refer to carpal tunnel syndrome. It is a condition where the median nerve is pinched within the tunnel and causes pain. It is also experienced in the numbness of the wrist or hand, once thought to be a result of repetitive motion such as painting or typing. This is a painful condition by continuous flexing or stressing over a lengthy period of time which is caused by pressure on the median nerve that carries nervous impulses back and forth between the hand and the spinal cord.

Carpal tunnel is a fibro- osseous tunnel on the palmar surface of the carpal bones. It transmits a number of tendons and the median nerve from the forearm into the hand. Surface markings are proximally the distal wrist crease or distally the hook of the hamate bone.

Both base and walls of the carpal tunnel are a concave bony channel that is formed by the carpal bones. It is the flexor retinaculum or transverse carpal ligament that forms the roof of the carpal tunnel. It attaches to the scaphoid tubercle and ridge of the trapezium laterally, to the pisiform and hook the hamate medially.

The recurrent thenar branch of the median nerve, the motor branch to the thenar eminence, leaves the median nerve in or beyond the carpal tunnel. It curves back over the flexor retinaculum to reach the thenar eminence. If the incision over the calpar tunnel is made to far laterally, it is dangerous making surgery.

The carpal tunnel transmits to only one nerve, the median, and nine tendons. They are the following: flexor digitorum superficialis which contributes to the four tendons that insert on the middle phalanx; flexor digitorum profundus which contributes to the four tendons that insert on the distal phalanx; flexor pollicis longus; palmaris longus which is a tendon merging with palmar aponeurosis; flexor retinaculum; flexor digitorum superficialis; flexor pollicis longus; flexor digitorum profundus and skin.

Therefore, the carpal tunnel is important because the median nerve can be compressed in cases such as what was mentioned above, carpal tunnel syndrome, wrist dislocations (result of this is that you cannot entirely move your fingers and hands) and bone fractures (it is a minor injury in which the fragments remain not in proper alignment so there is a need for surgical treatments before it can be back to its normalcy).