Sometimes Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is the real cause of pain in wrists, hands and fingers. There is nerve compression inside the “tunnel” in the wrist for one reason or another (things like weight gain, swelling, inflammation, pregnancy, diabetes).
More often, however, muscles are to blame for symptoms that appear to be Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
“Trigger points” are crabby places in your muscles that “refer” or “fire” pain elsewhere. That means that when you have pain, lots of times it is referred pain. A trigger point some distance away is causing your pain.
This can be the case with pain in your fingers and wrists that’s caused by muscles in your palm or lower arm that are “too tight”. Sometimes it’s as simple as muscles that are too tight and sometimes trigger points have developed in muscles.
If you turn your arm palm-side up, you will be able to warm the muscles on the palm side of your lower arm to help them relax.
You can warm them by applying a heating pad or pack, or you can massage them. You can do this yourself, or ask a friend or loved one, or go to a professional massage therapist.
Start out rubbing gently, and as your muscles relax and begin to loosen up, you can apply pressure and massage more and more deeply. You can use your opposite forearm as a rubbing tool or something like a tennis ball.
As you press deeper, you will find tender places. Some of them will refer into your wrist, arm or hand.
You may be surprised at how tender and how many places there are. If you feel sensations or relief in your fingers or hand and wrist as you press, then you have found a trigger point.
Keep massaging on and around the tender areas.
Press and hold each trigger point you find for about 12 seconds. You can go back to each one multiple times. Apply enough pressure so there is definite discomfort but don’t “kill” yourself.
On a scale of 1-10, you’d like the pressure/discomfort to be about 7. “1” isn’t therapeutic because it’s too light. “10” is too deep and uncomfortable to be therapeutic.
Take as many breaks as you need. You don’t need to release everything all at once or even all in one day.
And, take time to “smell the roses.” It took you a while to get to this state of discomfort and it can take a while to get back to neutral, where you have no more carpal tunnel pain.
If you’d like to know more about an easy-to-use, simple pain relief program that I created just for you, I invite you to click here: Carpal Tunnel Tool Kit.
“Because You Deserve To Feel Better!”