Carpal tunnel symptoms: Recognizing a common work injury

Recognizing carpal tunnel symptoms as soon as they begin and seeking help for them may help shorten your healing process. However, you may not know what the symptoms of this condition are. Our team at Advent Physical Therapy can help you find out the symptoms of this increasingly common workplace injury.

At Advent Physical Therapy, we’ve been helping patients in the greater Grand Rapids, Michigan area treat their work injuries since 1996. Our team has seen a variety of injuries during this time, and we’ve noticed several factors that help increase the effectiveness of our physical therapy plans. One of the most important of these factors is patient understanding. We’ve seen that patients who understand their condition do better in their therapy, too. This is why we’ll work hard to help you understand as much as possible about your injury and the therapy we use to treat it.

Two common carpal tunnel symptoms

Our team knows that you may not know any carpal tunnel symptoms or even what carpal tunnel syndrome is. Carpal tunnel syndrome is a condition in your wrist where the median nerve is compressed. Our team also knows that the median nerve provides feeling to the palm side of your thumb, pointer, middle and ring fingers. We know that this condition is often caused by poor wrist posture while doing activities in the workplace. For instance, spending hours typing with poor wrist posture can cause you to develop carpal tunnel.

As for the symptoms of this wrist condition, our team sees patients that commonly complain about two specific symptoms. One symptom of carpal tunnel our patients often have is pain. The pain you may experience from this condition may be felt in your hand, wrist or forearm. A second symptom that we typically see with carpal tunnel is feelings of numbness in the hand or fingers. This numbness is the result of the pinching of your median nerve. Other symptoms you may notice include things like pins and needles sensations in your hand, increased hand clumsiness, and hand or wrist weakness.

Now that you know some of the common symptoms, our team encourages you to be on the lookout for carpal tunnel. We especially encourage you to be aware of such symptoms if you’re an office worker, construction worker or you have any job that involves repetitive wrist movements. If you do notice any carpal tunnel symptoms, our team is here to help you.

Contact our team today for more information or to schedule an initial appointment.