Thanks for dropping in! Today’s brief but important message may help you or someone you know avoid an unnecessary hand surgery! Please feel free to share this newsletter!

Tunnels, tunnels everywhere - but which tunnel to blame!

Carpal tunnel syndrome is a common problem that produces pain, numbness, and weakness in one or both hands. The carpel tunnel is an opening in the ligament and bone structure of the wrist through which a major nerve runs.

Because the pain, numbness, and weakness is felt in the hand, a common misconception in medicine is to blame the carpel tunnel for being too small for the nerve to pass through unaffected—and so a surgery to make the tunnel larger is often recommended by orthopedic surgeons—especially ones who need to make another mortgage payment on their summer home in Switzerland, or get a new transmission for their Ferrari.

The simple graphic above shows us where more often than not the real problem is occurring. You can see how the nerves that go into the hand originate in the neck, and a neck tunnel problem is far mor likely to produce the hand symptoms than a problem in the tunnel in the wrist.

The Lesson of the Funny Bone - Referred Pain

Ever smack your elbow on something and feel burning in your hand? They call that hitting the ‘funny bone’ - a referred pain phenomenon. One of the nerves that runs from the neck to the hand passes close to the surface at the elbow. If you hit it, you will feel the burning and numbness in your hand. This is the same sort of thing that goes on when the neck tunnel is ‘pinching’ a nerve.

The tunnels that nerves pass through made up by your vertebrae are called IVFs, which stands for inter-vertebral foramina (good Scrabble words). They can become narrowed for a number of reasons:

• disc herniation

• spinal stenosis

• subluxation (misalignment)

• chronic inflammation (swelling of tissues around the IVF)

• a combo of any or all of the above

When these neck tunnels are narrowed you can feel all of the symptoms normally associated with carpel tunnel syndrome in your hands—without even having any symptoms in your neck (recall referred pain).

If you have seen my prior newsletters, we have solutions for everything in the above list to open up the neck tunnels without you having to undergo unnecessary wrist surgery.

ON THE LEVEL

I’ve had patients come to me after wrist surgery still suffering with the same symptoms because the wrong tunnels were addressed. Yes - carpel tunnel syndrome can be a wrist problem, but my clinical experience has been that this is rare compared to it being an overlooked neck problem. Some simple tests in my office can get to the bottom of this for you, or a friend or loved one suffering with this, and we can help! Give us a call!

Until next time,

Blessings to you!!!