Carpal Tunnel Syndrome includes symptoms like numbness, burning, tingling or sometimes itching in your fingers and hand. These symptoms are mostly felt in your thumb, first and second (index and middle) fingers. Those are the fingers that your median nerve serves.
Some doctors immediately jump to the conclusion that any pain in the area of your hand and wrist is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. But other doctors do a more thorough examination and also do some physical tests.
Regardless of the final diagnosis or the results of the tests, my question is always:
Why? Why are you having symptoms? What is causing them?
You see, there are reasons for your symptoms and the reason is not simply because you require surgery. Something is causing your discomfort.
Physical Tests for Carpal Tunnel
Let’s get back to the tests your doctor may conduct. Some doctors are trained to look at your neck muscles and spine to determine whether your symptoms may
come from that area. The doctor may even check levels of vitamins and minerals in your body.
But when it comes to muscles, most doctors just don’t get it. They know how to diagnose but not how to determine what caused your pain in the first place.
The Tinel Test
Your doctor will tap or press on your wrist. If you feel a shock-like
sensation or tingling of the fingers this is considered a positive
result for carpal tunnel. That means your doctor will be comfortable saying, “You have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.”
The Phalen Test
Your doctor will ask you to hold the backs of your hands together with your elbows bent and the backs of your hands touching. This creates more pressure on the nerve. If you start feeling symptoms within a minute, that’s considered a positive result, too.
The Electrodiagnostic Tests
Your doctor may also do a test that measure the electricity that your muscles produce. That test is called an EMG and is designed to detect abnormal electrical movement in muscle.
A second part is the Nerve Conduction Test which produces a small shock that will show how quickly electrical messages pass through your body when you move your muscles. This may cause some discomfort.
With these tests, your doctor is looking for muscle or nerve disorders. Here is the link to a video that will show you more about some of these tests on various parts of your body.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0uSpYd_Ics
The tests may show that nerves or muscles are not functioning exactly as they should. Sometimes the results will show a neurological (nerve) or muscular (muscle) disorder that may be causing your symptoms such as Multiple Sclerosis.
When your doctor reviews the test results, he or she will then decide whether you have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (pressure on the median nerve as it passes through your wrist) or a different disorder that may require treatment.
Natural Symptom Relief
You probably already know that I believe in my heart that in most cases the symptoms of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or other hand and wrist pain can be relieved naturally. And it doesn’t matter whether that’s your “official” diagnosis or whether something else is causing your symptoms.
And you also know that I am not a doctor.
What matters is that you figure out the cause or causes of your symptoms (check out the Causes Category here) and take action to get rid of your hand, wrist and arm pain, numbness or tingling naturally.