Video Transcript: A Simple Treatment for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Hi everyone! Dr. Orit Hickman here. I had someone send me an email the other day asking me about how to treat carpal tunnel syndrome, so I thought I’d put together a short video.

I have a series of five nerve glides that are really easy to do and basically would do them anytime that you’re feeling hand pain, numbness, or tingling.

1. So, the first thing that you’re going to do is you’re going to hold your hand in a fist. You'll hold that for a count of five.
2. Then, you’re going to open your hand up and hold that for another count of five.
3. You’re going to open your thumb up. Hold for a count of five.
4. Tilt your fingertips back. Hold for a count of five, and then rotate your hand away. And as you do this, you're probably going to feel things get kind of tight in and around your thumb.
5. So, this is when you go ahead and you pull on your thumb gently to open up and stretch just a little bit more. And again, hold for a count of five. And then, relax the hand. And we start over.

So, we’re going to do that one more time. I’m going to take you through the exercises. Now, something important to know about nerves: Nerves do not like to be stretched for long periods of time. So, you don’t want to hold something for about thirty seconds or longer because you’re going to decrease blood flow just a little bit to the nerve. And, [that] might feel good in the moment, but afterwards the nerve might be really irritated. So, everything that you do in terms of trying to help nerves feel better is [sic] you want to give them blood flow, you want to give them movement, [and] you want to give them space.

And so, we’re going to do this so that we give a little bit of blood flow and movement to the nerves. And again, we’re going to only hold each position for about five seconds. So, let’s run through those again. So, we’re going to do one, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. Remember to rotate. Hold the thumb. One, two, three, four, five. And then, relax. You want to repeat that about three to five times. And, you can do those throughout the day. And over time, that should help the hand feel better, should decrease numbness and tingling, and even decrease any pain that you might be feeling in the hand.

Let me know how it goes. Do me a favor: Give me a thumbs up or a like. [I’d] really appreciate that, and have a great day!