Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a tingling, numbness, or weakness in your wrist and hand that persists. That feeling may travel up your arm, disrupting your days and maybe even your nights. It can affect how you grasp or hold objects, complete certain tasks, or even make it difficult to sit and rest your arms and hands. Some strains to the wrist can be temporary and ease up on their own with rest and ice application. When the pain continues or grows worse, it’s time to have it looked at by a professional. Pain and numbness that doesn’t go away, grow worse, or hand weakness that causes you to lose dexterity are all signs of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
What is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is caused by pressure on the median nerve in the wrist, which is the nerve that helps you move your fingers, hand, wrist, and forearm. It passes through the carpal tunnel, a passage through the wrist composed of bones, ligaments, and tendons.
Many factors can lead to pressure on the nerve, but generally, the cause of carpal tunnel syndrome is anything that lessens the space in the carpal tunnel. The cause of this constriction could be swelling associated with arthritis, narrowing of the space due to a broken bone, medications, conditions causing nerve damage, obesity, and more. The cause could also be your working conditions, such as frequent use of keyboards, computer mouses, or any activity involving frequent and tense wrist movement.
Treating Carpal Tunnel with Massage
Massage is all about releasing tension and reducing pain to help your body heal, so it is a fantastic and low-impact way to assist in treating carpal tunnel syndrome. Massage therapy can help promote healing, reduce pain and swelling, increase mobility, assist in surgery recovery, and much more. Utilizing different massage techniques can optimize carpal tunnel syndrome relief.
Relaxation Massage
Relaxation massage is a beginner’s treatment, but it’s an excellent way to get started with tension relief and relaxation if you’re new to massage therapy. However, this is typically a full-body massage, so you may want to make some follow-up appointments with different types of massage therapy to focus attention on your wrists and hands.
Therapeutic Massage
Therapeutic massage is excellent in assisting in treating specific pain in the body. After talking with you about your experiences and symptoms, your practitioner will adjust their technique to focus on areas causing you pain. Often, you will start feeling relief from your symptoms after just one session! Therapeutic massage sessions may involve deep tissue massage or calm relaxation massage, but ultimately, they will be tailored to you and your needs.
Trigger Point Therapy
Trigger point therapy treats areas of the body that trigger pain when pressure is applied—either radiating from the spot or triggering pain elsewhere. Trigger point therapy practitioners know how to find those tough spots and work with them to release tension and relieve pain. Clients often feel significant relief after just one session! This type of massage therapy also helps with increasing mobility and flexibility.
Myofascial Release
Myofascial release is a more gentle tension-release form of massage therapy. Your massage therapist will gently work myofascial tissue until they find spots of tension, lightly increase pressure and pull back, and then repeat as the spot slowly relaxes. This helps with tension throughout the entire body as well as trigger points.
Managing Your Carpal Tunnel at Home
Though massage therapy is highly effective for helping your manage your carpal tunnel syndrome, there are also some helpful ways to assist in your treatment at home if you cannot always make it to the massage clinic.
Wrist Splints
Since frequently tensing and bending the wrists can lead to pressure on the median nerve, causing carpal tunnel syndrome, wearing wrist splints to keep your wrists straight can help reduce your symptoms.
Mind Your Tension
Try to be mindful of the tension in your hands and wrists when moving through your day. Avoid activities that strain your wrists, and try to keep your wrists in neutral positions as much as possible.
The correct stretches and exercises can also help with minimizing pain. Often, these are fairly simple and can be done while doing your everyday tasks. For example, even shaking out your hands as if shaking them dry can be very effective in reducing tension in your muscles and the median nerve.
Keep Warm
Cold hands decrease mobility significantly, so if your carpal tunnel gives you trouble when you’re at work in your cold office or driving your car on a cold morning, you might want to look into some gloves to wear while you work. Fingerless gloves or hand warmers can make a big difference in your symptoms!
Getting to the Root of the Problem
Our expert practitioners are here to help you experience relief and work to solve the root of the problem, not just mask the pain. Knowing the cause of your carpal tunnel discomfort is essential to managing and treating it. Through massage therapy, we can address the root of the problem to increase your range of motion and mobility and reduce pain.
Carpal Tunnel Massage in St. Albert
Come to Urban Massage & Wellness for carpal tunnel relief with massage in St. Albert. We strive to create an experience that is as comfortable for you as possible and creates the most success and healing possible.
Since there’s so much to choose from, you don’t need to stick with just one type of massage for all your appointments if you decide you’d like to try another. We encourage working with different types of massage until you find the one that works best for you and the management of your pain. Invest in your health and wellness by contacting Urban Massage today.
