What Is Carpal tunnel syndrome?
The wrist is referred as Carpus. The fibrous tissue surrounding the wrist protects that joint. Carpal tunnel is the space available in between the tissues and the wrist bone. The sensation of all the fingers of the hand is received by the median nerve that passes via this tunnel. When there is an inflammation in the carpal tunnel, it will infuriate the median nerve. As result of this, numbness and tingling of fingers happen. This condition occurs for those who suffer from “Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.”
What Are The Symptoms Of Carpal tunnel syndrome?
The symptoms of Carpal tunnel syndrome happen in stages. The primary symptom to be watched is the tingling or numbness of middle finger, index or the thumb.
The other symptoms include inconvenience in the palm and wrist. Take a look at the general symptoms of Carpal tunnel syndrome.
- Numbness or Tingling: One with Carpal tunnel syndrome will have a burning sensation or numbness in their fingers of the hand. Acute pain may give a feeling like a current shock happened in the hands.
The feeling will travel from fingers to the wrist and finally to the arm. You can feel this change while driving a car, answering phone calls or reading books. Also, you will feel the sensation during your sleep, and your sleep will get disturbed.
Most of the time people try to shake their hands to get rid of the feeling. Slowly the duration of numbness will increase.
- Weakness: You will feel very weak about your hands and may not hold any objects correctly. As the muscle pinch happens, you cannot get a grip on your fingers and hence cannot keep things. The median nerve that gets irritated leads to such occurrence.
What Are The Causes Of Carpal tunnel syndrome?
Due to the pressure applied to the median nerve, the Carpal tunnel syndrome occurs. This may happen due to several reasons. The pressure developed on the nerve reduces the tunnel space and increases the pain over a period. The list of reasons that cause carpal tunnel syndrome are-
- Joint swelling and swelling of soft tissues happen because of various illnesses including hypothyroidism, lupus, diabetes, gout, rheumatoid arthritis, and obesity.
- Due to the continuous movement of wrist and hand may lead to swelling of the membranes that are surrounding the tendons. This condition is called a (tenosynovitis). This triggers carpal tunnel syndrome.
- Bone spurs, the growth of new bone, dislocated bones and broken wrist bones occupy the carpal tunnel space and exert more pressure on the median nerve.
What Are The Things One Should Do To Manage Carpal tunnel syndrome?
When you have understood the basics of carpal tunnel syndrome, you must take some steps to ease out the pain. Also, following few regular activities can relieve you from the pain.
- Always do have some small intervals between works to relax. You may work on the hand drill or play guitar, but you need to take a break. Have time set on alarm clock for every fifteen minutes and relax by stretching your hands. This way you can pump more blood to those areas and prevent numbness.
- When you work on tight targets to complete accounting or typing on a system, you must make use of a user-friendly pen with soft grip or feather touch keypads to reduce the impact on your hand.
- Make sure to stay away from activities that can hurt your wrist. Do not bend your wrist in either direction rapidly. Try to keep your wrist position as neutral as possible and make swift movements.
- Do some wrist exercises regularly. You can even practice this in the market while shopping. At home, while working in the kitchen or at office desk, you can do some stretching and release the pressure from the wrist.
- Keep your wrists and hands at an elevated position
- When you suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome during your pregnancy, then you can have some relief from pain by placing your hand at a raised position. Even for any water retention problems or fractures, this posture may help.
- Use Pain Relievers
- In the worst case, you can take some tablets available over the counter in medical shops like Ibuprofen or Aspirin. Medicines will help to alleviate pain and decrease swelling of the tissues.
- Make sure to reduce pain by natural home remedies and keep the medicine as a rare option.
What Are The Things One Should Avoid To Manage Carpal tunnel syndrome?
Certain activities that should be avoided when one is suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome are as follows:
- Do not involve in activities in which wrist and hand are heavily involved like pulling heavy objects, etc.
- Do not work on the computer for long. As using the keyboard for an extended period of time can aggravate the symptoms.
What Are The Best Foods For Carpal tunnel syndrome?
While on one hand, you can follow stretching and exercises to relieve pain, on the other hand, selecting the right food will reduce inflammation and hence the pain.Make a habit of including the below-mentioned food in your regular diet to have a pain-free life.
- Spinach: Spinach is rich in Vitamin B6 and available easily. The analgesic action of Vitamin B6 helps to reduce the pain. Thus, it can play a significant role in reducing the carpal tunnel syndrome condition. If you plan to supplement with medicine, then remember that more than 200 milligram is harmful. But, in spinach form, you can eat more without any side effects. Make spinach salad, pie, or an innovative omelet with spinach.
- Other than spinach, Vitamin B6 is also present in cantaloupe, cauliflower, bananas, oranges, and chicken.
- Remember due to sourness, don’t frequently use oranges. Sour food can trigger the carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms.
- Bell Peppers, Tomatoes: Food rich in antioxidants can reduce inflammation. Incorporate bright colored food in your diet. Have red and yellow bell peppers. You can have more tomatoes. Carrot and fresh green leafy vegetables will improve blood circulation and ease the pain.
- Try and add more salad to your diet. Bell peppers also help to reduce your body weight and hence alleviate pain due to swelling.
- Pineapple: The enzyme called bromelain can break down protein and aid digestion. Similarly, it also works against inflammation. Pineapple has the bromelain enzyme. When you eat fresh pineapple as slices or juice, you can get the benefits of bromelain without any side effects. But when taking as tablet remember not to take antibiotics, blood thinners or aspirin along with it. As an added health bonus, pineapple is also an excellent source of vitamins. Add an inch of ginger to pineapple juice and enjoy the anti-inflammatory property of ginger.
- Ginger and Pineapple fight inflammation and reduce pain within a short span of time.
- Salmon: Salmon helps in any inflammation diseases. Carpal tunnel syndrome or rheumatoid arthritis predominantly has more swelling. This is due to water retention. Have salmon, sardines or tuna fish in your diet to lessen the numbness symptom. Fortified with two omega-3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA, these fish help in reducing the inflammation. Check with your medical practitioner before you start taking any dietary supplement.
- Walnuts: Walnuts are a rich source of ALA, another omega-3 fatty acid, which helps to reduce inflammation thus controlling carpal tunnel syndrome.
- Other than walnuts, chia seed and flaxseed are also rich in ALA. Have walnuts raw or add to fruit salad and eat without guilt.
- Dry fry some flax seeds for your evening tea time. You can add flax seeds as topping to your salad and reap the benefits. Grind chia seeds to a fine powder. Combine it with a glass of lukewarm water and drink.
What Are The Worst Foods For Carpal tunnel syndrome?
Right food reduces pain, but it is equally useful to avoid the foods that will trigger the pain due to carpal tunnel syndrome. Know the worst foods to avoid.
- Sour foods: Citric acid is an enemy to carpal tunnel syndrome. It causes swelling and pain and thus aggravates the symptoms. Avoid citrus fruits like lemon, orange to get away from the pain permanently. Lemon has health benefits, but sadly it does not help for this condition. Also, tamarind and other sour food products must be avoided.
- Dairy Products: All the dairy products have inflammatory property. So, you must stay away from milk, cheese, yogurt, cream, and paneer. Any inflammation condition will get aggravated by dairy products.
- If you worry about stopping dairy products, then replace them with rich sources of protein products including tofu, spinach, quinoa, and lentils.
- Junk Food: Processed food and fried food often contribute to the junk food family. Food that gets cooked for a long time and oil fried foods make the inflammation condition worst. Burger, pizzas, noodles, fries, etc. should be completely avoided.
- All those tasty French fries are called a toxic food as they induce the toxic substance called as AGES (Advanced Glycation End Products).
- Salty foods: Salty food products like pickles have yet another culprit called preservatives. Both together ruin the entire immune system. Food that is available in stores which is ready to eat will have chemicals to prevent it from spoiling. All these foods cause harm to the joints. Pickles, pizzas, etc. must be cut down from one’s diet when suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome.
- When you take more salt, it leads to water retention. The blood vessels expand, and these joints swell. Swollen joints put pressure on the median nerve and hence worsens carpal tunnel syndrome. Consciously limit salt intake to 1500 milligrams in a day.
What Are The Medicines For Carpal tunnel syndrome?
What Are The Tips To Manage Carpal tunnel syndrome?
Keep yourself warm
Warm hands can experience less pain. So, keep your hands warm. Either use gloves or use hand warmers. Warm hands will receive more blood, and streamlined blood circulation will improve the condition.