Carpal tunnel causes a great deal of pain and it can be hard to treat. The best thing you can do is prevent carpal tunnel when at all possible. While they is no way to guarantee that you will not get it there is certainly ways to decrease your risk and aid in decreasing weakness or pain that you may have already.
Watch Your Health
One of the most important things you can do is stay healthy.
There are many diseases and conditions that can make it more likely for you to get carpal tunnel and if you can avoid these it can make a difference.
You should exercise when you can to help keep your muscles healthy and control your weight. You should also avoiding smoking as this can lead to other diseases.
Change Your Work Space
Those who work behind a desk all day really need to make sure that they have the appropriate work space. Your desk placement, computer monitor, chair, and paperwork needs to be placed strategically. You should work to make the space function based on ergonomic guidelines.
Body Mechanics
The way that you place your body matters. You should make sure you are using proper posture and make sure that your wrists are also in the proper position if you type a great deal for work. This will help greatly in reducing your risks.
Evaluate Activities
If you take part in many extracurricular activities that increase your carpal tunnel risk then you may want to consider cutting back on the amount of time you spend on these. It is no secret that there are some things you can do that can really increase your risks and if you are able to avoid these or drastically reduce them you will have a greatly reduced chance of developing this.
Take Breaks
When you are taking part in activities such as typing that can cause an increase in your risk you need to make sure that you take breaks frequently. When breaking you should change your position, stretch, rest, or even more to another activity for a while. A sign that you need to take a small break would be if your wrists really starts to feel stiff or you develop any pain in the area.
It is better to take a break than to continue to push through it when it is clearly causing some damage. Pain is the body’s sign to you that something needs to change.
Warm Your Hands
If you work in an environment that is cold it is more likely that you will have stiffness or pain in your hands. If you are not able to adjust the temperature at your job you should at least wear gloves that will aid in warming your wrists and hand. You might even want to consider getting some warming pads if the environment is extremely cold.
Hold Your Mouse Lightly
If you use a mouse for work you should make sure you hold it lightly and that your forearm and wrist is relaxed. There are also mouse supports that can help to relieve the stress that is put on the wrist and the hand. This comes with a bit of cost but it can certainly make a difference in preventing carpal tunnel.
Avoid Wrist Deviation
You should avoid any tasks that makes your wrists deviate from one side to another. You should also avoid tasks that require your wrist to remain in a flexed or extended position for extremely long periods of time. This most open happens in jobs that use hand tools and should be avoided or at least limited whenever possible.
As you can see there are many ways to prevent carpal tunnel and these are just a few ways that you can start to make a difference. Sometimes the jobs and activities that you take part in can really affect you in ways that you would never imagine. Making sure that you do everything possible to prevent carpal tunnel can help you to avoid a great deal of pain later down the road.
If you think you may have carpal tunnel already an early diagnosis is always better than waiting till it has progressed. Wrists braces can help with the pain and will also help to make sure that you are holding your wrists in the correct position if you take part in daily activities that increase your chances. Prevention is always better than having to treat a condition once it really starts to act up and cause problems.
