If you suffer from chronically sore wrists, pain in your hands, and numbness or weakness in your fingers, you may one of the many Americans coping with CTS, or carpal tunnel syndrome. This condition can make work, hobbies or other manual tasks agonizing or even impossible. Luckily, however, natural therapies may allow you to overcome your symptoms without the need for surgery.

The carpal tunnel is a conduit, a passageway for the median nerve and a group of tendons that control muscle movement in the hand. The median nerve is the primary nerve for routing messages from the brain to the fingers and vice versa. Unfortunately, tight ligaments or inflamed tendons can put pressure on this nerve, and when it becomes sufficiently impinged, pain, numbness and weakness may occur. 

CTS is a well-known threat to office workers who spend countless hours mouse-clicking, typing or performing other desk tasks, especially if the desk or chair sits at a non-ergonomic height or the worker fails to take regular rest breaks. But other factors also seem to influence who gets CTS and who does not -- if you are a woman or overweight, for instance, you are more likely to suffer from it.

How Our Clermont Chiropractor Can Help Your CTS

Chiropractic treatment can resolve many cases of CTS by relieving pressure on the median nerve. Our chiropractors at Michaux Family Chiropractic can determine precisely where the nerve impingement is taking place (it may not be in the wrist at all, but closer to the spinal column), and then apply chiropractic adjustment to take the pressure off. If tight ligaments are a problem, we may prescribe exercises to help you limber them up. Swelling and inflammation of the carpal tunnel can be relieved through physiotherapy. These techniques work in concert to restore pain-free wrist, hand and finger flexibility.

Does your job put you at risk for carpal tunnel syndrome?