Carpal Tunnel Exercise
Great For Unlocking
Pressure And Tension In Your Hand!

The Exercise Creates Flexibility and Mobility in the Wrist and Hand

Carpal tunnel exercise would be for you if you do lots of typing in your job (e.g. secretary), lots of computer keyboard typing (nowadays, aren't we all required to do lots of keyboard typing?), lots of cash register keying-ins or you play musical instruments.

The reason?

You're at relatively higher risk of getting the so called carpal tunnel syndrome since you need to exert strong, repeated wrist motions when performing these activities.

Over time, such repeated wrist motions can cause compression at your wrist, giving you numbness, burning, tingling, and a prickly pin-like sensation over the palm surface of your hand and into your thumb, forefinger, middle finger plus your ring finger.

You could experience shooting pain which goes from your wrist up your arm, or down into your hand and fingers.

With continued wrist compression, you may start to have muscle weakness, making it difficult for you to open jars and hold objects with your affected hand.

Eventually, your hand's muscle which is served by the median nerve may grow significantly smaller (atrophy), especially the fleshy part of your thumb.

Untreated, carpal tunnel syndrome may result in permanent weakness, loss of sensation or even paralysis of your thumb and fingers of your affected hand.

(P/S: Carpal tunnel is an area in your wrist where your bones and ligaments create a small passageway for the median nerve).

The median nerve is responsible for both sensation and movement in your hand, in particular the thumb and first 3 fingers. When the median nerve is compressed, your hand will feel as if it has numbed.

Don't wait until you've the symptoms (like the ones I mentioned above - numbness, tingling, burning and prickling pin-like sensations), start doing carpel tunnel exercise now to prevent the carpal tunnel syndrome.

It's easy to do.

You don't take long to do the carpal tunnel exercises. Rest assured, you don't require any equipment either....

I normally do the exercises at the start of each workday and during a break in work. The exercises are aimed at reducing the amount of pressure on the median nerve in my carpal tunnel and to prevent injury.

1. Extend and stretch both your wrists and fingers as if they're in a hand-stand position. Hold for a while.

   Straighten both your wrists and relax the fingers.

   Make a tight fist with both your hands and bend both wrists down.

   Extend your arms out to the sides with the palms facing down. Extend your fingers and stretch through the elbows.

   Hold for a while.

   Exhale, rotate your shoulders back and bring your palms facing up.

2. Try this nerve gliding exercise, it's good for strengthening your median nerve.

   Keep your wrist neutral, bend your fingers towards your palm.

   Straighten your fingers and bend your wrist and fingers backwards.

   Stretch your wrist, fingers and thumb backwards.

   Spread your wrist, fingers and thumb with the palm facing the ceiling.

3. Do this tendon gliding exercise to strengthen tendons in your hand.

   Keep your wrist neutral, stretch your thumb away with fingers straightened.

   Clench last 2 knuckles of each finger towards your palm with your wrist neutral.

   Slide the tips of your fingers as far past your palm and stretch thumb backwards while keeping the wrist neutral.

Do exercises 2 & 3 10 times. Then hang your arms loosely at your sides, shake them for a while.

You can prevent carpal tunnel syndrome by observing these few simple good habits:

• Every 1 or 2 hours, get up from your desk or work station, move around a bit and do some body stretches
• Do full body stretches daily, especially concentrate on your upper body
• Set up your work station or work desk in correct position that's aligning to your body
• Do lots of forearm strengthening exercises and upper body exercises like arm, shoulder, chest and upper back, which give you upper body strength to support a good, erect seated position

But you know what?

If you respect your body's needs and don't get the carpal tunnel symptoms by smartly preventing them first, it would be the best for your hand and wrist!

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