What exactly is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and is surgery the best answer? Here’s the lowdown:
The Carpal Tunnel is a passageway in your wrist formed by eight carpal bones, the transverse carpal ligament, nine flexor tendons, blood vessels, and the median nerve. Pretty packed, isn’t it?
Syndromes are bunches of symptoms. When the median nerve is compressed it gets unhappy (nerves hate to be pressed on!) and causes symptoms like pain, tingling or numbness.
The median nerve allows feeling and function to your palm and fingers. “True” Carpal Tunnel Syndrome involves pressure on the median nerve inside
the carpal tunnel.
Pressure in the “tunnel” can be caused by inflammation (swelling) of the tendons and soft tissues (not bones.) Swelling can be caused by weight gain, fluid retention or wrist injuries or bone spurs. Also, pregnancy can cause swelling but that usually goes away after the baby is born.
The median nerve travels from your neck to your hand and allows feelings or sensations and movement in your hand.
Now, there can be pressure on the nerve anywhere between your neck and your hand. Anywhere. That is called median nerve entrapment. The nerve is “trapped.” Median nerve entrapment is often misdiagnosed as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Why?
Because Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and entrapment of the median nerve share the same symptoms; numbness, tingling and weakness of the hand, wrist, thumb and first three fingers.
The difference is the location of the compression.
So is carpal tunnel surgery the best answer?
1. Well, here’s the deal. About 50% of carpal tunnel surgeries don’t work. Why not?
Because the surgery didn’t address the cause of the symptoms. Many times the median nerve is being compressed elsewhere and not in the carpal tunnel. Cutting the wrist won’t help if the pressure on the nerve is somewhere else.
You have to get rid of the cause.
2. Out of the “successful” 50%, about half of those patients start having symptoms again within a couple of years. 🙁 Why?
Because nothing else changed. They went back to doing the same activities and set up the same scenerio for carpal tunnel pain. Perhaps that break of several weeks while they were healing was more helpful than the surgery.
3. Sometimes surgery is the ONLY answer. If bones in the wrist have been broken or crushed or if there is a deformity caused by arthritis or a cyst, surgery might be the only good solution to take pressure off the nerve.
But in most cases, getting rid of the causes of the carpal tunnel symptoms naturally can make worlds of difference. In fact, you will feel better all over.
Besides, you have your carpal tunnel ligament for a reason. It helps your hand function properly. It wasn’t designed to be cut or “released” surgically.
Are there natural options for carpal tunnel pain relief?
You bet! There’s lots of informative posts here to help you get rid of your carpal tunnel symptoms naturally.
Hi Garald,
Thank you for writing and for asking your probing questions.
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 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.
Bodies are very logical. They work in certain ways. They complain when certain things are going on.
But symptoms lie all the time.
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.
Another problem is that 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.
If you scroll down on the right hand side of this page you will see red Trigger Point Books. They are a set of two medical texts 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. Perhaps your local library can get a copy of the Upper Extremeties volume for you to borrow. I use my set all the time and believe they should be in every doctors personal library and used often. Unfortunately, doctors only have as much time as everyone else.
Please be aware that sometimes medical tests err and that all medicine is not based on fact and research. 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 given 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 if I can determine that there may be a simple natural way to relieve 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?
First, let’s try something that is non-invasive and that doesn’t change your body forever.
Let’s look at posture and muscles and trigger points and nutrition.
Then if that doesn’t work consider carpal tunnel surgery as a last resort.
Kathryn Merrow
The Pain Relief Coach
Where are all of your references as the information is not consistent with medical literature of which I am aware. How do you prove your patients have true CTS? Your claim that 50% of all CTS surgeries do not work is completely bogus if the surgery was done on a confirmed CTS. That means confirmed by medical test and not just because of your diagnosis from just the systems.