Hi,
I’m teaching a webinar to over 200 quilters tonight, people who have major problems with hand and wrist pain. This made me realize that I haven’t written a blog post about hand/wrist pain in a very long time. Considering that there are approximately 400,000 surgeries done every year to release the ligament in the wrist, I think it’s a topic I should to attention here.
Back in 1997 I was suffering from severe pain in my left wrist, pain that was so terrible that I couldn’t open a door, wash a glass, or do massage. In fact, the pain shut down my massage practice and had me thinking that I needed to find a career that only needed one hand. I was told that I had carpal tunnel syndrome and that I needed to go in for surgery. No way! To begin with, the surgery isn’t mistake-proof and I already knew someone who had lost the use of her hand because of a slipped knife that severed the median nerve in her wrist. I wasn’t about to take that chance. Secondly, even if it went smoothly, scar tissue would very likely form in the wrist and entrap the median nerve. I wasn’t willing to take that chance. So, what to do — well, stop doing massage pray a lot that I could support myself until I found something else to do.
Fortunately I decided to really explore every muscle that crosses over the median nerve, from my neck to my hand, and it worked! I found spasms that were so intense that when I would just touch them the burning pain would shoot down my arm and into my wrist and fingers. Some of the spasms were so bad that my entire arm and hand would be on fire, like I’d stuck it into a barbeque grill. I was shocked. But, as I held the points the burning decreased, and eventually went away. I was so happy because it gave me back my career! Needless to say, it was a bit longer than this, but when I set my mind to it, it only took about two hours to resolve the issue. I was (and still am) so excited!
It turned out that my entire hand/wrist pain and numbness was coming from my neck (Scalenes muscle) and the muscles on the top of my forearm (extensors). There were bits and pieces in other places, but these were the two main muscle groups that were causing pain and numbness.
After working it out on myself I started to teach others how to self-treat because muscle-memory causes the muscles to shorten again. As a result the treatments need to be done frequently. In my case, I did them several times a day until it was totally gone. I’ve found that when people self-treat they usually take less than a month to eliminate the carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms.
If you know anyone who is suffering from pain or numbness in their hand/wrist area, please forward this message to them. The odds are so good that they don’t need surgery.
Have a great day,
Julie