Is carpal tunnel syndrome really an epidemic?
Or, are we just a little misguided here?
Perhaps most of the pain we experience in our wrists, hands and arms is not truly carpal tunnel syndrome.
You know you definitely have pain in your carpal tunnel area or in your hand, wrist and arm. But, unless you’re pregnant or diabetic, or have a carpal tunnel space which is truly too small for the nerves and blood vessels to pass through, your carpal tunnel pain is most likely caused by muscles one way or another.
When muscles are overused or used incorrectly, muscle imbalances can result. These imbalances cause pain in arms, hands, wrists, necks and backs and elsewhere.
Maybe you remember typewriters. Maybe you are only familiar with computers.
Before computer keyboards, there were electric typewriters.
Before electric typewriters, there were big clunky manual typewriters. The typists who used them had to insert each sheet of paper, one at a time. They had to roll the paper into the proper position. They had to roll the paper out when they were done. (Sounds like fun, huh?) They had to push the typerwriter roller (the part that help the paper) to the left to start each new row of type.
Those old manual typewriters were not ergonomically designed. The rows of keys were widely separated. The user had a lot of hand and arm movements going on.
But, guess what they didn’t have?
They didn’t have carpal tunnel syndrome or repetitive stress injuries.
Why not?
Because they
were constantly using different muscles and muscle groups. They were always changing positions. They had to get each sheet of paper from somewhere, and get this–if they wanted photocopies, well, there were no photocopy machines.
To make a copy, they had to pick up a piece of carbon paper (what a cool thing that is!) and sandwich it between two pieces of paper (or more, for multiple copies.)
The point here is that is a very good thing to use your muscles in a lot of different ways rather than always the same way.
In fact, today would be a very good day for you to start. How about now?
Stretch your fingers wide-ways. Hold your elbows next to your waist and rotate your hands, palm up, palm down. Flex your wrist up and down while your palm is facing up. Do it again with your palm facing down. Roll your shoulders. Lift your shoulders up, back and down.
If we get moving more, all over, we can start knocking out the “carpal tunnel epidemic.”
Maybe it’s not an epidemic after all. Maybe we just need to get back into muscular balance like when we were little kids. We used ALL of our muscles then. 🙂
“Because You Deserve to Feel Better!”