Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Symptoms and Remedies

By Tom Nicholson

Contrary to what you may believe, carpal tunnel syndrome can affect both your hands and both your wrists. Essentially, people who are required to perform repetitive tasks with their hands are at most risk of developing this condition. In fact, according to statistics, approximately 5% of the American population suffers from carpal tunnel syndrome. Interestingly enough however, statistics reveal that women are more at risk than men, although men can also succumb to the condition. If you have any reason to believe that you may be suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome, then you should make every effort to familiarize yourself with the condition, including symptoms, treatment, and etc.

Whenever there is enough pressure on your median nerve in your wrist to cause numbness and pain, this is diagnosed as carpal tunnel syndrome. In between the bones that are in your wrist, the median nerve goes through, and sometimes pressure can occur to the nerve when the ligaments and tendons become inflamed. This is what causes the carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms to show up in the first place.

The pain which results from carpal tunnel syndrome can manifest itself in your wrists, the palms of your hands, your forearms, elbows, and even your shoulders. Bear in mind however that although pain is almost always present with the condition, sufferers can also experience numbness in the hands and fingers. In fact, many people who to suffer from this condition report feeling a tingling sensation in the fingers, hands, and wrists. Once the condition has surfaced, the pain you experience will become progressively worse as you continue to use your hands and fingers. Interestingly enough, the pain is often at its worst at night when you're no longer using your fingers and hands.

The good news is that there are treatment options available for those dealing with carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms. Usually you'll find that non-surgical treatments are first used to help deal with the problem. Most people don't want to immediately go the surgical route to deal with carpal tunnel. Some of the common treatments include using ice packs to take down the swelling, wearing splints on the wrists at night, and taking NSAIDs to help reduce the inflammation and pain.

Unfortunately however, there are certain cases where regular treatments, such as those which have just been mentioned, fail to provide any relief, and in those cases, surgery may need to be considered. Of course, in the vast majority of cases, surgery is considered to be the last option, and it's only ever considered if the condition is deemed to be particularly serious. If none of the non-surgical treatments have been successful then your doctor may end up advising you to have surgery, and for many people, this has proved to be the final solution in terms of being able to live a life free of the pain caused by carpal tunnel syndrome.

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