Did your doctor say you have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS)? That’s a diagnosis.
A diagosis generally tells a symptom or symptoms.
For instance, if you have appendicitis that means you have an inflamed appendix. Why? Don’t know. But the doctor says let’s fix the appendix by removing it. And in that case, that is probably the best thing to do.
But that’s not often the case with pain in hands, arms and wrists.
I like to look beyond the diagnosis. I like to find the WHY.
A good way to determine whether people have true CTS is by
symptoms. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome has specific symptoms but many doctors diagnose any pain in the hand and wrist as CTS.
And that is part of the problem. When the nerve entrapment occurs someplace other than the wrist (carpal tunnel) the surgery will fail. Surgery at the wrist can only make more space at that location for the nerve.
If the nerve is being compressed anywhere from the neck to the lower arm, surgery at the wrist won’t help.
Additionally, trigger points are medically documented areas of hypertonicity (tightness) that actually cause pain elsewhere. Trigger points can occur in the upper body and cause pain in the wrist and hand and arm.
I have said that about 1/2 of CTS surgeries fail. I also said that about 1/2 of the patients who had surgeries that are considered successful begin having symptoms again within a couple of years. This is because the surgeon didn’t look to find all of the causes of the hand and wrist pain. The surgery only treated symptoms.
Bodies are very logical. They work in certain ways. They complain when certain things are going on. They cause symptoms.
But symptoms lie all the time.
Unfortunately, very few doctors understand how muscles work to cause pain. That’s just not something that is taught much in medical school. Rather than look for causes of pain, med schools focus much more on treating symptoms with drugs and surgeries.
I received a question from a reader who questioned the information that I share. My claims are based on information from people far more brilliant than I who are in the natural pain relief field. They research; I report and I treat.
If you search at Amazon or a medical book store you will find red Trigger Point Books. They are a set of two medical texts written by Travell MD and Simons MD and are on the expensive side. They were written by medical doctors for the medical profession. They contain a tremendous amount of information, research and documentation about pain and how to treat it.
If you love reading medical information, you might like to buy a set or borrow a set from your local library. I use my set all the time and believe they should be in every doctors personal library. I would also hope that every doctor would use them to diagnose but they only have so much time, just as we all do.
Please be aware that sometimes medical tests err and that all medicine is not based on fact and research. (That’s why it’s called a practice.)
There is so much information to know that doctors simply cannot know everything. Neither can I. But I do understand how bodies and muscles work and that gives me a little advantage in helping people feel better naturally.
Over the years many people have shared with me their diagnoses. (I do not diagnose because I am not a doctor; I can only assess.) That’s good because I get to see what the doctor suspects. But I really don’t care about the diagnosis if I can determine that there may be a simple natural cause for their pain.
And in my head I wonder if someone really does have true carpal tunnel syndrome and if it’s not caused by a crushing injury to the wrist, why didn’t they always have it? If ‘the wrists of women are smaller than the wrist of a man’ and that’s why the woman has CTS, why didn’t she always have symptoms?
If pressure in the CT is caused by overweight, why not lose weight? I know it’s not easy but it is doable.
First, let’s try something that is non-invasive and that doesn’t change your body forever as surgery does.
Let’s look at posture and muscles and trigger points and nutrition. Then if that doesn’t work perhaps consider carpal tunnel surgery as a last resort for the numbness and pain in your hands and wrists.
We don’t want to only treat symptoms. We want to figure out the cause of the carpal tunnel symptoms and get rid of the cause to heal your carpal tunnel pain naturally.