Video Transcript: Learn Exercises for Alleviating Wrist and Thumb Pain

Hi, everyone! Dr. Orit Hickman here from Pain Science Physical Therapy.

Thought I’d put together a short video on wrist and thumb pain. Right now, we are spending a lot more time at home working from home on our computers, maybe not in the best ergonomic positions. And so, because we don’t have necessarily the ability to change a lot of things about what’s happening in our environment, I thought it would be really important to — and I had a patient that brought it up to me — I thought it’d be really important to put together a quick video to show you a really good stretch or a couple of stretches that are great for your wrist pain. 

So, a couple of things. A lot of times, if we’re spending a lot of time on the computers, especially if we’re on a very small laptop, our thumbs are doing a lot of movement and our pinkies are doing a lot of movement. Other thing is that if you’re spending a lot of time on a tablet or on our phones, again, our phone — our thumbs are very, very active. And, your thumbs run across — the tendons, run across the side of the wrist. And so sometimes, wrist pain can actually be related to the tendons of the thumb.

Other type of wrist pain that can happen is wrist pain on the outside or the pinky side of the — of the wrist. And again, that’s coming from this type of movement while you are working on the computer. 

So, a couple of things that I would recommend, first of all, is get up and move a lot. So, try not to sit more than twenty or thirty minutes working on screens just so that you can get up and give your hands rest. Second one is there’s — there’s a few really good stretches. These stretches you can probably find in my elbow videos. These are pretty common and they’re good ones, but I actually like — there’s a stretch that I really, really love for the thumb. 

And so, what you want to do is you actually put the thumb into a fist. So, it’s inside your fist and what you do is you bring your arm straight out, and then you drop your pinky down to the floor. And, what you should feel is a really huge stretch across backside of the thumb. And, you want to hold that for about fifteen to twenty seconds, and then let it go. And, as long as things aren’t getting numb or too tingly, this is a really good stretch. If you find that after doing this that your pain has increased for some reason, one of the reasons may be related to nerve and nerve sensitivity. And so, we may have to look at exercises that are more related to nerves and nerve glides, which I have a series on that as well for carpal tunnel, which is another video. But, this one I really like for thumb pain and wrist pain that’s across top here to help loosen that up.

And, the other thing that you can do which is really simple it’s just actually bringing your hand across them this way to stretch this outside portion or pinky side of your hand. So, keeping your hands straight and just bringing it across will stretch this. If you — if you make a fist, you don’t get the stretch of the muscle all the way up the side of the pinky. But, that could help as well.

So, the other two that I kind of talked about earlier that you would find in my elbow series is a stretch where you hold the thumb out, and you bring the pinky — the hand down and open up this way. That loosens up the muscles across the top of the wrist or the underside of the wrist — sorry and the — and the underside of the forearm. 

And then, there’s another stretch that you do where you push — you put your hands on the backside of the arm, and you bring your arms down. Again, keeping the elbows straight should stretch over the top of the back of the wrist. 

For any of these stretches, you want to do them for about twenty to thirty seconds, and you shouldn’t have to hold them for more than that. And again, as long as your symptoms get — you know — feel better with that, that’s a great exercise — those are great four exercises to do. But, if you find that that really aggravates things, it may be that you have more nerve symptoms. And, we want to address it a little bit differently. 

So, let me know how it goes. Try these stretches for wrist and thumb pain. And, give me a thumbs up if you think those were helpful. And, I hope you guys have a great day. Take care! Bye.