You've heard it before: for hair stylists, carpal tunnel syndrome is an occupational hazard. In fact, it's almost a bad joke in the styling industry. 

It's also extremely common for severe hand pain, numbness or weakness to sideline a successful styling career. Personally, every day I can count on at least one phone call from a stylist who has carpal tunnel syndrome and needs immediate help. 

A case in point: I recently spoke with Roseanne who owns a small salon in southern California. She called me to find out more about the pain in her thumb and forefinger. After working with carpal tunnel patients for so many years, I already knew what Roseanne was going to say.

She began with, “I’m having trouble using shears. My hand just won’t work right anymore.”

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Roseanne saw a family doctor for this. He told her that her symptoms were indeed carpal tunnel syndrome. But that’s no surprise. 

Actually, anybody in the field of professional hairdressing and styling is at high risk for getting this condition. Hence the statistics, which come from the National Institutes of Health are very clear:

This industry has nearly 5 times the incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome compared to the rest of the population.

For now I’m going to focus the rest of this discussion on treatment. So I’ll skip over the anatomy and physiology of carpal tunnel syndrome (you can learn more about it here).

Exactly why there is an association between hair stylists & carpal tunnel is well known. Indeed, there are plenty of articles that discuss who gets carpal tunnel syndrome and why.

It’s enough to say that professional hairdressers or stylists do one thing, a lot. That is, they constantly use shears and grip utensils like combs and brushes. In other words, their fingers and hands are always moving. 

As a matter of fact, using shears is especially taxing on the thumb. The thumb makes rapid and forceful open-close motions which cause huge stresses on tendons. The thumb also provides most of the force when gripping an object. These are the very seeds for growing carpal tunnel syndrome.

Roseanne’s doctor sent her for testing using EMG and MRI. The test results confirmed his suspicion that she had carpal tunnel syndrome. 

After referral to a specialist, his conclusion was that surgery would be Roseanne’s only hope to restore her hand to normal. As a matter of fact, this is the same recommendation I hear about a lot. For most hair stylists, carpal tunnel syndrome diagnosis means surgery. 

But Roseanne’s main concern was that she could not take the time to recover from surgery. Your carpal tunnel surgery recovery time can typically take up to 6 months if the surgery is on your dominant hand. She simply couldn't afford that. 

Roseanne’s situation is an example of what infuriates me about the state of carpal tunnel medicine today. There are 3 basic problems:

1. First, surgeons almost always compare hand surgery to a tooth extraction. They say, “It’s simple.” or “It’s quick and over with.” Actually, it’s not even close to being simple or quick. In fact, it’s major surgery with potentially major complications. It’s far from a minor dental procedure.
   
   
2. Second, after years of analysis, the National Institutes of Health warns doctors that EMG and MRI are NOT reliable for a  diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome. Frequently, these tests produce far too many false positive diagnoses. In other words, these tests diagnose carpal tunnel when it’s actually not there. Yet thousands of these lucrative tests are performed on carpal tunnel patients every single day. And the false positive results makes doctors rush patients into a surgery they don't actually need.
   
   
3. Third, pushing Roseanne into surgery without offering her non-surgical options is unethical. In the past decade, many great non-surgical options became available. Moreover, study after study shows that in MOST cases, non-surgical treatment turns out to be equal to, or even better than surgery.

Roseanne is in the category of needing to treat her painful carpal tunnel syndrome right away. It’s too late for her to avoid it. 

If you’re lucky, your symptoms are not as bad as hers… at least not yet. That means you can avoid full blown carpal tunnel syndrome if you just take some simple precautions. This is why I say hair stylists & carpal tunnel can finally part company, and for good.

Maybe pain, numbness, tingling or weakness are just starting out in your hand or fingers. Or maybe these symptoms are already severe. Either way, the best things a stylist can do right now are stretching exercises.

I’ve found that the following 3 core stretching exercises can bring your hands back to normal again. If symptoms are only just beginning, they will worsen fast if you don’t do something now. (Usually it takes 3-6 months to become severe.) And if symptoms are severe, you need to add other remedies to the stretching exercises, like night bracing and myofascial release massage.

The following 3 core stretching exercises alone can reverse the symptoms of mild or even moderate carpal tunnel syndrome. But there’s a catch; you must take a break every half hour to do them.

Happily, they don’t take long to do; maybe 1 minute in total. But they need to be done regularly. (Some patients tell me they use a timer to make sure they don’t skip their exercise breaks.)

For hair stylists, carpal tunnel syndrome is an occupational hazard. The profession is known to be high risk for developing this painful condition. But there are great core exercises targeted toward relieving symptoms — and even reversing carpal tunnel completely. But to be successful, you must commit to taking the time to do these exercises regularly during your workday.