Carpal tunnel
 

Anyone here have any experience rehabbing or coming back to weightlifting after carpal tunnel surgery?

Thanks!

Apparently not... But I'll just throw out there that it would be wise to try eliminating gluten for a while to see if that helps. In any case, reducing pro-inflammatory foods will be a big help.

What did the surgeon/staff suggest w regard to rehab exercises/stretches/etc?

Just to clarify, I haven't had the surgery, yet. The surgeon thinks its inevitable, however.

Thanks for the follow up...I've been gluten free for about a year now.

Surgeon laughed at the idea of rehab/stretches.

I have had improvements, though still not perfect. Here is what I've done:
1) exercised my extensor muscles...this I'm pretty proud of...I bought working/gardening gloves and strung a bungie cord through the finger tips. I can hold the bungie w/ one hand and estend my fingers under tension w/ the other hand. I do high reps of that when I'm chillaxing at home.

2) I wear wrist braces at night. Still getting used to them, but I don't wake up w/ numb hands at night any more (additional sleep probably helps the inflimation thing, too).

3) Soft tissue work throughout my upper body...neck (thoracic outlet) and forearms/wrists/hands...this is usually excruciating, but in a good way. It's also improved my front rack, so there's a double bonus there!

4) I know hold my son (9months old) very differtnly, to ease how much work my wrists do.

5) got a fully articulating key board (http://www.ergoexpress.com/ergomagickeyboard.aspx) for my desk job...

all that said, things are MUCH better! I'd say that items 2 and 3 had the biggest impact, but its a guess since I started all of them about the same time.

These are the guys who give surgeons a bad name.

Glad to hear you're at least making improvements. If you work all day on a keyboard, are you able to set a timer or somehow make sure you take breaks frequently and move around?

Charles Poliquin had this article the other day and it mentioned A.R.T. used to help carpal tunnel:

http://www.charlespoliquin.com/ArticlesMultimedia/Articles/Article/843/A_Closer_Look_at_Active_Release_Techniques_(ART).a spx

A.R.T isn't cheap but I'd rather try a few sessions of that before I let a surgeon go at it.

A very small study on ART and carpal tunnel:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2647071/

Here's an abstract from a Cochrane Review on non-surgical options for treating CTS: http://www.aafp.org/afp/2003/0815/p649.html (WFS)

In summary corticosteroids, splinting, yoga, and carpal bone mobilization have been shown to be effective.

However another Cochrane Review found that surgery had better outcomes for those with severe CTS. It was inconclusive whether surgery or steroid injections had better outcomes for mild CTS: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...2/pdf/standard (WFS)

As a PT student I always prefer that patients try the non-surgical approach at first. But you, your physician/surgeon, and your therapist have to decide whether or not you're just delaying the inevitable.