Hi folks, I'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist, Brad Heineck physical therapist.
Together we are the most famous physical therapists on the internet,
In our opinion of course.
Brad's talking about cutting his own hair
Please tell him not to. I know I could
It's gonna be a disaster
All right today Brad we're gonna talk about three braces and three stretches to heal your carpal tunnel syndrome
and we got some braces that you can use both during the day and
Also, the braces that you use at night and then we got three stretches. These are top three stretches
I'd say that you'd want to do. You're definitely gonna want to try these if you have carpal tunnel. I've seen to the point where
with some people it had actually reversed it to the point where they didn't need surgery and that's the goal
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Bob I just wanted to mention I got my Christmas shirt on in case someone's watching this next June, it's December now
And it's really cold out there. With the windchill, it's probably pushing down to zero, here in Minnesota
where the air is cold. The first brace we're gonna show Brad is
the tunnel tamer and
So this brace is for mild cases of carpal tunnel I wouldn't use it in a severe case
it's one you're trying to see if you can reverse. It comes with a strap that goes around your wrist and
you can also attach this to a Fitbit or one of those
fitness bands. You could also
Because these are the parts that attach to it
So this could attach to your Fitbit or your fitness band or even a thin watch
You wouldn't need this part is what I'm trying to say
And yeah, because these straps are doing the work
They're the ones that are giving you the progress and success not the strap around the wrist right so they're the anchor
Anchor for it, so you're gonna take the first one and
You're gonna put this loop around the pinky, and then you just attach it across the hand to the opposite side
And then you're attaching it. Put a little little tension on it.
Yeah, you can adjust it if you want more tension
You can put it lower on the strap. So these are elastic and they got velcro
so it's very easy to attach them, and then the other one goes over the thumb and
pulls it. Again go across the hand. Get that crisscross. Oh, sorry. I got it the wrong way oh
You gotta have the velcro side, the sticky side to the sticky side, otherwise, I'll eventually get it
Don't worry about it. It's not that hard, I just make it look hard. Yeah, this happened to me once too
Yeah
So what this does
One it kind of helps prevent the hand from extending easily
Because when you have your hand in this extended position when you're typing
That's what can close off that tunnel and irritate that nerve
Yeah, so this keeps you in the neutral position is what you want to be
But it also kind of provides a natural cupping to the hand an anatomical position
That's the normal position of the hand and it's like you're holding a bowl
and that's gonna keep some of the stress off the nerves now
I have not tried this with patients yet because I just don't have one that has mild. Do you have one right now?
No, I don't
so
The chiropractor who invented this, he said that he's tried it with his patients. It's helped them. It's helped
especially the mild cases, so called a Tunnel Tamer. We've got all three of these braces
We're gonna mention today down in the link right below, so all right
Go to the next one. The next one is a brace you'd wear at night.
Especially a lot of people tend to sleep, not that one, no
No, you tend to sleep especially if you curl up your hand, your wrist and you lay on your hand at night
you're gonna want our wear a brace, and I think isn't your wife wearing a brace?
She does when she gets a flare-up, and then she starts wearing a night brace and it calms down
Yeah
very consistently, so I've definitely seen it help patients. This first one is called the
Coreflex Universal Lace-Up Wrist Immobilizer.
it's very simple to use you can just slide your hand in there and
It's got velcro of course which I had trouble with
You loosen up the velcro slide her in
That goes on quite nicely.
And you strap it there and what's nice about this and you're not going to be able to see this
I don't think is there's a drawstring here
And so you pull on this and then pull it across so it's a really nice fit. It's a real comfortable brace
That's the most
Important thing with a carpal tunnel night brace is that it's comfortable
You can sleep with it
And it doesn't wake you up
Making your hand or whatever feels comfortable, because then you're not doing the job, you know one thing
I want to point out about Brad they have staves in here
These metal staves you can shape those
And so I can bend this if it's too much for me or just doesn't fit my hand quite
right you bend that and then you put it back on again. Okay? Oh, yeah, it feels better now. Custom fit
Yeah, so it's again
This is a really good fit. That again was the Coreflex
Now if you want to take it even a step further so you're not even bending the fingers
Then we're gonna go to the board, and I think this is a German name
I think and it's the soft hands, but with finger support
that's very comfortable. It really is easy to put on and it's just velcro you slide your hand in there and
velcro it back up and it just
feels good on the fingers and everything, and then you have your thumb there if you need to use it/
Play handball with that. Yeah, you probably could maybe we could advertise it for that, handball players out there?
So kind of gave you the three things: one that you can wear during the day
One for night wear if you don't need the full support, and then we got the full support one here so
all right Brad
Let's go to the exercises now
The first I picked out which I think are the three most important exercises. Clinically proven.
Yeah, well in my mind right, with our experience.
Now with carpal tunnel what you have is the median nerve that comes off of the neck and even T1
C5 and T1, it comes down, it goes right through here right underneath the
Right by the coracoid process here
It comes off the neck, kind of goes right here by the coracoid process
and then it goes down the front of the arm and it goes into the hand and it affects
Generally affects the first three fingers and a half of the third one so the thumb, index
ring
Yep up and down, it's amazing how that nerve really does dissect the finger
It does and so you're gonna get numbness or tingling maybe pain in that area. I always look for wasting right here, too
After a while this pad may waste away a little bit because the nerve is not effective
You know the muscles, the muscles getting smaller instead of that puffiness gets shallower
It looks like a house. We call it atrophied in the business don't we.
Us therapists. So the problem is a lot of times where the nerve comes out
Sometimes it's getting pinched up here and pinched down at the wrist
It's called the double crunch or double crush.
So we want to make sure this is all stretched out. You want to have good posture
It doesn't make sense, maybe doesn't make sense to you, but it actually does. This can all get squished up
Yeah, but we're gonna show that with the next exercise, but the first exercise is nerve gliding
We're gonna try to glide the nerve a little bit. Very simple exercise you're gonna first start off without
You're just gonna put the hand straight out kind of level like this the arm straight out
and you're just gonna start working the hand down it like this and
You'll often find if you have one hand that's bad and one hand that's good
As far as carpal tunnel this one won't go as far, and I don't want you to push into it you just bump
Up against the pain, so you might start off the first couple days
Just going a little bit
not quite as far as you would later on when you start stretching it further and further
And I think the interesting thing about this is if you're truly pulling that nerve
You might feel that way up into your neck and feel it oh boy. I feel it up here when I move my wrist
It's a very clear sign that that nerve needs to be loosened up a little bit. Precisely precisely
Okay
So once you get into the point where you can really bend the wrist down as far as you'd like no pain
then you can go ahead and add this into there and
Bring your neck over at the same time so
remember that nerve goes if you can imagine put your arm out there like from your fingers over the top here all the way and
Up into your neck so when you bend your head that way you're stretching. It stretches even a little more
The final movement is you're gonna go to a wall, which we don't have a wall
Brad's gonna be the wall.
He found his purpose in life
So I'm gonna go ahead, stretch that hand and now I'm gonna go ahead and bring it back like this and now you can do
I would start off with probably just ten of these I
Wouldn't do any more of these. You could do it a couple times a day
All right Brad. Oh, I was making faces at you
Some people never grow up do they. Okay next one Brad is the
chest stretch, again we want to open this all up make sure there's plenty of room for the nerve to come out and plenty
of room for it to come through and not get
Stretched so we're gonna do the chest stretch you can do this a lot of different ways
You can bring your elbows back like this and stretch back like this, and I'm stretching that chest you can go
Arms behind the back and stretch like this. I need to have something like this because my arms don't reach behind, so I do this
You can go into the corner or you go into a doorway
And put your arms on both sides and lean into it. Just lots of ways to do a chest stretch
This feels good Bob. All right now. Let's do some neck extensions
Do 10 of those again to open things up
When you do that bring the shoulders back as well, and sometimes you'll find out whether or not
Your carpal tunnel is a neck problem, sometimes it can be.
10 of those and the final one is we're going to do is the first rib
mobilization sometimes that nerve is getting some pressure on it by the first rib and the rib is not moving like it should
So you can take a rolled-up sheet or we got the stretch out strap here, either one works out really well
and
The best way
we found yeah, you sit on it on the one side of it like this you bring it over and
this is nice because you got the loops on there yeah and
Make sure I'm in on it really good. Yep and
Now I can pull down
onto that first rib and I can bend away to the side at the same time. So the idea is to lock the
Scapula and the shoulder down with this sheet or the stretch out strap. I like the feeling of this. Do you like this Brad or not
Yeah, it works
Well you can feel in control and you can tell you've got good
stabilization of the shoulder and when you bring your head over you feel that stretch. You can try just putting your hand there
Going like this and doing over
I do this during the day sometimes
And that works. Gotta get right up in that meaty area where the first rib is.
I've got all these massive muscles Bob. I can't reach over that far. Then you better use a strap so alright
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