Lifestyle Tips For Carpal Tunnel

Carpal Tunnel affects millions of people every day. Here are some easy lifestyle tips that may help you in alleviating your CTS (note: these tips don’t cure CTS—you may need to see a specialist. But these changes in lifestyle can prevent you from making your CTS worse)

Household tips

- Ask family members to pick up the slack.
- Ignore the dirty dishes and dust bunnies until someone else can help you with them.
- Hire a cleaning service if you can afford it.
- Do smaller loads of laundry to avoid carrying heavy baskets.
- Use a small cart to transport laundry to and from the laundry room.
- If the process of moving the laundry from the washer to dryer is painful, do it little by little, or enlist a family member’s help.
- If you have chronic CTS, don’t put your clothes away. Leave them in the laundry baskets or hanging over a low rack.
- Use a lightweight vacuum with a wand, and keep the handle close to you, moving it with your whole body and instead of just your arm.
- Build up the grips on mops or brooms by wrapping them with weather stripping. Do not grip them tightly.
- Pace yourself.
- Buy pre-chopped vegetables, prepared food.
- Order takeout.
- Use paper plates to save your hands from having to wash and dry dishes.
- Buy a light skillet and saucepan.
- Soak dishes overnight if you don’t have a dishwasher.
- Find a kitchen tool with a grip that is right for you.
- Put items on a lazy Susan.
- Store heavy things where you can slide rather than lift them.
- Get in the tub to clean it rather than reaching over the side.
- Use big movements when scrubbing. The small movements will irritate your CTS.
- Rotate the cleaning chores so you’re not doing them all in one day.
- Use a cleaner that requires no rinsing.

Social Tips

Normal social situations are often a problem if your hands are painful. Things everyone else takes for granted, like a handshake, applauding or going out to a movie, can cause severe pain. The following hand suggestions may give you ideas to help you protect yourself.

- Wear a hand or wrist brace in social situations. People won’t offer to shake your hand and won’t be offended when you don’t offer yours.
- If someone does offer you his hand, take it between both of yours and gently squeeze it.
- Fake applauding if you’re in an audience. Everyone else will be making the noise already.
- In a movie, sit on the aisle so you can shift your position.
- At a party, stand near a table so you don’t have to carry around your plate and glass.
- Don’t isolate yourself because of your pain and fatigue. If you don’t want to go to large gatherings, make sure you go out or have a friend come in.
- Find a walking partner.
- Let them help. People like to be needed.
- If you are in pain, say so. If you suffer in silence, others may misinterpret your withdrawal as something else.

Handwriting

Some people with CTS have trouble writing by hand while it doesn’t bother others.

If it does bother you, or you want to learn to write with less stress on your fingers, it is possible to change the way you write. First look at your desk or table. Is it the right height? Some people work better on an inclined surface. Make sure your paper is on the side of the arm you’re using to write and not aligned with your torso.

And try another pen hold. Most people hold the pen with the thumb and index finger, balancing it on the middle finger. Instead, try holding the pen between the index and middle fingers, using the thumb only as a guide. This reduces the highly pressurized grip that characterizes the traditional pen hold taught to almost everyone in childhood.

Laptop Computers

The laptop is handy because it can be used anywhere. However, this is part of the reason it is risky if you have CTS. If not used on a desk, it is at an angle that can hurt your hands and put them at risk for injury. The laptop can be plugged into a standard monitor or used with a separate keyboard, but using the laptop on your lap may put you at unnecessary risk.

The Mouse

The mouse was first introduced to make computer software easier to use with just a point and a click instead of memorizing key combinations.

However, the mouse has some serious risk factors for repetitive strain injuries like carpal tunnel due to repetition, force, awkward positioning, and poor technique.

The keyboard distributes the work between your two hands, but with the mouse you only use one hand to position, drag the cursor and click. This leads to the mouse overworking your dominant hand as well as the index finger. To make matters worse, many of us use more force than needed to click. Or keep clicking if the computer doesn’t respond right away. Your dominant hand is very busy throughout the day, even without the hundreds of mouse clicks. Sometimes the mouse is held very tightly, as if it’s going to get away.

The mouse is designed to fit into our hands. You probably put your wrist and forearms on the desk while you’re using the cursor. This bends the wrist up and sideways at the same time, straining the forearms.

Sometimes the mouse is difficult to control. The cursor disappears off the screen and holding the button down, lifting and repositioning the mouse also trains our muscles. Trackballs might not be any better for CTS because the trackball also puts the hand in an awkward position. People also tend to flatten, rather than curve, their fingers and this can lead to forearm strain. This also happens with the use of touchpads.

So if you want to spare your hands, use the mouse sparingly.

Whenever possible, use key commands. You can put a cheat sheet on your monitor to help you remember them.

Tips for correct mouse use:
- Relax your thumb and pinkie
- Hold the mouse gently
- Keep your mouse roller clean or use one with an internal roller
- Keep the mouse at elbow level
- Move the mouse from the elbow

If you've been reading on and on about our carpal tunnel advice but are struggling with specific tendonitis issues instead, read on! We can help you with tendonitis exercises as well! (scroll down the page to view the information)