Helping Hands Heal since 2005
From Dr. Z - Carpal tunnel syndrome specialist
Everyone who knits knows that knitting & hand pain are usually closely associated. It's a shame that hand pain can chip away at such a deeply relaxing activity. A famous quote about it says,
“In the rhythm of the needles there's music for the soul.”
All people who knit, sew, crochet, etc. share this sentiment. They also understand their passion can be the source of hand pain. That’s because maintaining that musical rhythm produces “repetitive stress” on your fingers.
The human hand is not designed for repeating small movements quickly and repeatedly - sometimes for hours on end. As a result, it causes stress in the soft tissues, resulting in hand or finger pain.
Sewing, crocheting, knitting & hand pain go hand in hand. (Sorry, but the pun is accurate.) Devotees know this from experience. The pain is a type of injury that results from repetitive stress or strain. That's where we get the term Repetitive Stress Injury or RSI.
There are many types of RSIs. In fact, there are many harmful activities when it comes to using your hands. Generally, when it comes to the hand, the most common repetitive strain injury is tendonitis. This condition is relatively easily treated. A sister condition is carpal tunnel syndrome. Unfortunately, it's not as easily treated.
Tendonitis symptoms can occur anywhere from the fingers so the elbow. They can be on the palm-side or knuckle-side of the hand - or both. Usually, a tender area or "hot spot" produces pain when touched or pressed.
Tendonitis symptoms usually occur while trying to perform an activity. The symptoms include pain, numbness, and tenderness -especially when touching, rubbing, or pressing the affected area.
Symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome occur mostly in the palm of the hand and fingers. They are pain, numbness, tingling, shooting electric shocks, burning, weakness, and clumsiness.
Symptoms usually start out at night only, making it difficult to sleep. As carpal tunnel advances, symptoms appear during the daytime when performing certain tasks.
Carpal tunnel syndrome "technically" in not an RSI. That's because carpal tunnel is not "caused" by repetitively stressing your hand; it just happens while doing so. In fact, carpal tunnel syndrome is a form of tendonitis inside the carpal tunnel of the wrist joint.
The pain you get from all repetitive stress results from microscopic rips along the tendons of the fingers. According to the National Institutes of Health, scientists do not know for certain why this happens in some people but not in others.
But the problem occurs when the body tries to heal those rips. As a result, tiny scars or adhesions form on the tendon’s surface. With more and more repetitive stress, those adhesions rip apart. Then, the body tries to repair them once again.
This microscopic "rip-and-repair" process continues over and over again as you work with your hands. Consequently, the body interprets it as irritation and tries to heal it. Therefore, the area inflames and swells with fluid as a way to protect the healing process. That inflammation is what produces the pain you feel.
This inflammation due to constant microscopic rip-and-repair of tendons is the underlying pathology in tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome.
When the inflammation occurs inside the carpal tunnel space, something else also happens. The inflamed and swollen tendons push against the adjacent median nerve. In fact, the pushing slowly crushes the nerve. It's that nerve crushing that produces all of the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome.
So in addition to the pain of tendon inflammation, the crushed nerve produces a host of
other symptoms, like numbness, tingling, shooting electric shocks, and burning in the fingers and hand. Often, hand weakness and clumsiness also occur. These are the most common
carpal tunnel symptoms.
Repetitive Strain Injury develops over long periods of time. In fact, tendonitis (and carpal tunnel syndrome) occur so slowly that they often go unnoticed in the beginning. Then they continue to progress.
Usually, once you’re even aware of the symptoms, the pathology has advanced relatively far. This is especially true with carpal tunnel syndrome because it also results in damage to the median nerve. For this reason, if you're knitting and hand pain becomes a problem, don't wait for it to worsen!
If knitting & hand pain are causing problems at the moment:
If you’ve determined your knitting & hand pain issues are due to tendonitis or even carpal tunnel syndrome, what next? Actually, you can do a lot that will help you a great deal.
Wear a wrist brace at night to avoid unconscious hand bending and twisting. In fact, when your hand hyper-bends at night, the pain feels much worse in the morning.
Also, make sure to wear a wrist brace made for carpal tunnel, and not a generic drug store splint which can do more harm to your wrist.
Rest your hands as often as you can. When you take periodic rests from knitting, hand pain will diminish if you have either tendonitis or mild carpal tunnel.
Depending on how severe the pain, you may have to halt knitting temporarily. Generally, if you avoid knitting or other strenuous hand activities for at least 2 weeks it will help tremendously. See this list of strenuous and harmful hand activities.
During your rest periods, take a moment and do stretching exercises. These exercises stretch your tendons and break up the adhesions causing pain and inflammation.
Wrist tendonitis exercises and carpal tunnel exercises are identical. And they only take a minute to do, so they won't interfere with your work.
Do these stretching exercises as often as you can - preferably every 1-2 hours. They’re a great investment of time because such quick exercises make a big difference in healing your painful hands.
Along with the above 3 therapies, this component is REQUIRED for carpal tunnel syndrome.
Myofascial massage is a special type massage for your wrist and forearm. It kneads the tissues below the skin in order to break up adhesions and the resultant inflammation. It also encurages circulatioin and drains excess fluid from the wrist joint.
The massage must be performed at least daily - but twice daily is best. You will need a therapist or a partner to perform it because it requires two hands. However, the CarpalRx does it automatically.
Myofascial release massage is highly effective against wrist tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome, especially when the conditions are caught early.
It's better to prevent hand pain so you don't have to cure it. Therefore, it's prudent to take measures to prevent wrist tendonitis or carpal tunnel syndrome in the first place.
There are a few simple things you can do now to avoid suffering later.
In conclusion, making a few easy adjustments to your knitting routine should result in healthy hands while you work.
Most say that knitting & hand pain are like bread and butter; always occurring together. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can avoid the most serious hand pain problems like tendonitis or carpal tunnel syndrome by taking simple precautionary measures. And if you already have one of these painful conditions, you should treat it right now before it worsens.
