It usually starts at night. You wake up at 3 a.m. and your hand is asleep, the thumb and the next couple of fingers buzzing and dead. You shake it out and it comes back. Then it starts showing up in the daytime, too. Your fingers go fuzzy holding the steering wheel on the way out past Goldfield, or while you’re reading on your phone, and you drop a fork at dinner for no reason. That’s carpal tunnel, and lots of people in Apache Junction get real relief from PT.

What’s Going On in Your Wrist

Flip your hand over and look at the crease of your wrist. Right under there is a tight little passage, bones on the bottom and a tough strap of tissue on top. Nine tendons run through it, and so does a nerve that feeds your thumb and the next two and a half fingers. Bend the wrist all night, or grip a hammer all afternoon, and the tendons swell up a little. There isn’t room for that. The nerve gets squished, and you get the pins and needles.

Who Tends to Get It

We see it in all kinds of people. A few groups show up over and over:

Office workers on a keyboard and mouse eight hours a day.
Side sleepers with a fist tucked under the pillow.
Moms-to-be, since pregnancy makes you hang on to water.
Diabetics, and people with thyroid problems or wrist arthritis.
Weekend ATV riders out in the Superstitions, white-knuckling the handlebars.

How Physical Therapy Helps

First we’ll figure out if it really is carpal tunnel. Your neck can fool you here, because a pinched nerve up there feels a lot alike, so we check it too. Then we brush each fingertip, have you squeeze a grip gauge, and tap right on the wrist crease. If that sends a zing into your fingers, it’s a pretty good clue.

A night splint is usually step one. You wear it to bed so your wrist can’t curl up, and a lot of people are sleeping through by the second week. Then we teach you nerve and tendon gliding exercises. They’re gentle, a little odd-looking, and they help everything slide through the tunnel more freely. We may add hands-on work for tight forearm muscles, too.

We’ll also go over your day. Maybe the keyboard drops an inch. Maybe you stop strangling the steering wheel. And every half hour or so, you open your hands wide and shake them out, which takes about five seconds.

When It Needs More

Look at the meaty pad at the base of your thumb. If it’s looking flat or hollow, or your fingers are numb all day every day, call sooner. The nerve could be taking damage, and a shot or a hand surgeon might be the better next step.

If your fingers have been going numb more often than you’d like, call Modern Medicine of Mesa, AZ. We’ll help you get a good night’s sleep again.