Understanding Pregnancy-Related Carpal Tunnel And Fast, Safe Relief

Transcript

Why Pregnancy Triggers Carpal Tunnel

Symptoms And Nerve Territories

Immediate Relief With Cold

Home Cooling Routine And Results

Tendon Glides And Nerve Flossing

Bracing Position And Study Update

What To Avoid And Ultrasound Help

Don’t Panic And Get Specialist Care

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the Hand to Shoulder Solution where Pain Meets This Match. I'm your host, Carl Petito. I'm a board certified hand therapist specializing in the rehabilitation of orthopedic conditions that affect the fingertips to the shoulder. You know, we use our arms and hands all day long for everything, and we're only born with two. We need them both. And one hand helps the other in everything that we do, and they get beat up uh quite a bit. Let's talk about a common condition, carpal tunnel syndrome, but more in detail, let's talk about carpal tunnel syndrome with pregnancy. I treat a lot of women during pregnancy that are having acute, very intense carpal tunnel syndrome. And during pregnancy pregnancy, as we all know, there's a lot of hormonal changes and they often lead to a lot of fluid retention, and that can very commonly occur within the carpal tunnel. So if you look at your palm and you look at the heel of your palm, that's your carpal tunnel. And patients come in with complaining of a lot of deep aching pain, numbness and tingling on the thumb side of the fingers, uh, the nerve that goes through the carpal tunnel affects the thumb, index finger, long finger, and half the ring finger. This side is actually the ulnar nerve, a different nerve and different different locations. But I'll actually look at the wrists and and feel them, and they'll feel very warm and very inflamed, and they'll look actually a little puffy and swollen. The last woman I saw with this was actually in tears. She was having eight or nine out of ten pain very intensely for quite a while. She didn't know what to do. It she was she's been rubbing it, which increases inflammation. The nerve lives very close to the surface, and any pressure on that is very aggravational and increases inflammation quite severely. And the nerve is about as wide as a pencil and thick like a noodle, so it's so it's big, comes out of the neck, travels through the armpit, and one of the tunnel areas that travels through is that carpal tunnel right here, which is made of the carpal bones. And you can look at some other videos where we describe the carpal tunnel in detail. So, what do we do? It feels warm because it's inflamed, it's irritated. So let's shrink the inflammation with cold. Alright, we never want to put heat on that. This is a severe condition that uh is occurring acutely, which means it's new, chronic is just something that's old, that's been going on for a long time. It's acute, it just started, just started with pregnancy, and boy, it's intense. So let's shrink that down with cold. You don't want to put heat on this cold running water, just stick it under the faucet until it's deeply cold. 10 to 20 to 30 seconds. If your water doesn't really get that cold and you would live in a really warm climate, you can just take an old water pitcher or can any container and you can submerge your wrist and hand right in the water. I would go up to that bone. So that bone on the back of your wrist, I would go up to that big knobby bone right there, and take it out of the refrigerator, submerge that when it's deeply cold. You can take it out, maybe just you know, you can hold, you can lay your hand on it for neutral warmth from your but your own body and say, Okay, that's a little warmer now. Go back into the cold again, deeply cold or under the cold running faucet, deeply cold, and then you're done. So the woman, the woman I'm talking about who had this and she was in tears, um, we did it in the office, she felt better. Then I said, Go home and do this every hour for the rest of today until you go to bed, every hour, and then the next day, just continue doing it automatically, just prophylactically, uh, late morning or even early morning if you have to, late at least late morning, lunchtime, uh, dinner time, and before bed, or again, or more often if it's necessary. After a few days, after the inflammation has calmed down, and they can kind of get a handle on their pain. Um, I would also have them start with um positioning the fingers in positions that get the tendons to glide in a very specific way through the tunnel to pull out any thick, heavy fluid that's uh stuck in the carpal tunnel that wants to pool there. So studies have shown that this position, moving to this position, moving to a full fist position, not clenching hard, but just positioning, and doing about 10 of those is ideal for bringing that through. And then we can also glide or floss the nerve through there in a couple of positions, three seconds, three repetitions, three times a day, and then out here like this. That's gonna be very tight. It um, and a lot of times people women will have this on both sides during pregnancy. So I'll have them do one side at a time, one and two, and three back on slack. One and two and three. Now, this person could only go could go about that that far. And then when they came in next time, they're they were going a little bit further, things are loosening up, pain wasn't eight or nine out of ten anymore, it was it was two or three, uh, and we got a handle on it. Now, sometimes you also have to fabricate a custom wrist brace to put the wrist in slight flexion. Flexion is this way, so we want slight flexion and slight ulnar deviation toward the little finger, so just slight, a couple degrees, couple degrees. We used to believe that 30 degrees of wrist extension maintained the maximum diameter of the carpal tunnel to reduce pressure on the nerve, but now latest studies have shown that slight flexion, slight ulnar deviation maintains the maximum diameter of the tunnel, which releases pressure on the nerve. And again, that's why we do not want any rubbing, no massage, because it's tempting to say, well, if there's fluid in there, let's just push it out. No, because that's putting pressure on the nerve. We can't have that. This is a nerve compression syndrome, pressure off the nerve. That's why we do the tendon gliding, that's why we do all this these different things to pull the fluid out rather than pushing um using massage. Now, another thing is ultrasound, so we can use high-frequency sound waves over the carpal tunnel to penetrate the tissues and get things moving. And again, that's not putting pressure, that's just using high frequency sound waves to penetrate the tissues on specific settings. So there's a lot that can be done. Don't panic. If you're experiencing pregnancy and all of a sudden, wow, my wrists are killing me. Get into your hand therapist, your hand surgeon, your hand specialist, PA specializing in hands. Get into somebody who's familiar with hands and let's get this thing care of immediately. Feel better. Thank you for watching. Thank you for sharing this and subscribing to the channel. Thank you for watching the hand to shoulder solution, where we are the solution to your pain.