Posture Evaluation For Carpal Tunnel

Currently, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome affects over 8-million Americans.

Only 23% of all Carpal Tunnel Syndrome patients were able to return to their previous professions following surgery.

Up to 36% of all Carpal Tunnel Syndrome patients require unlimited medical treatment.

(From The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, 2002.)

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is a disease that many suffer with and many seek professional help in improving. If you want to try and improve your CTS symptoms through at-home exercises, read on.

We’ll start with posture. Here’s a great way to observe your own posture and see if you fall into a bad posture category:

Take a picture from the front and side of your body (ask a friend or family member to help). Once you have your photo, go down the checklist that I provide below and write down what you see.

This will be helpful because it will identify what is occurring with your body showing your various compensations and it will be useful to review in the future after you have done these exercises for a while to see if there has been a change.

Special Note:
My approach for treating carpal tunnel has a mechanical origin, meaning it stems from muscle imbalance that lead to poor head and shoulder position, as well as carpal tunnel.

I am not qualified to give you medical advice beyond this scope.

So if hormonal, psychological, pre-disposed disease or any other reason for your carpal tunnel are the culprit, then addressing your physical muscular imbalance will help but should not be the primary focus. Please seek the help of a qualified professional to help you deal with the main contributor of your headaches and migraines.

Let’s get started with your postural evaluation!

POSTURAL EVALUATION FORM

FRONT VIEW:
- Is your head tilted or turned to either side? - rotation
- Are your shoulders level or does one seem higher than the other? - asymmetry
- Does one hand appear more in front of your body or lower? - rotation
- Which direction are your knee caps pointing? Are they pointing to the side, or is just one pointing to the side and the other seems straight?
- Are your hip joints lined up over your knee joints and are your knee joints lined up over your ankles? - rotation
- Are your feet pointing straight, or are they turned out or inwards? - rotation

EXAMPLES:

As you can see, this person has one arm rotated and in front of other arm, indicating trunk rotation. Spasm in shoulder blade area, shoulder pain and sciatica are common causes of this postural problem.

Knee caps are the “windows of the hips” and clearly this person has hip problems causing her knees to compensate and rotate and point outwards or laterally.

They also are experiencing externally rotated feet, a classic sign of postural compensation.

POSTURAL EVALUATION FORM

SIDE VIEW:
- Is your ear in front of your shoulder or do they line up? – dynamic tension
- Is your shoulder in line with your hip or do they line up? – dynamic tension
- Is your knee slightly bent or straight? – dynamic tension
- If you were to connect your ear, shoulder, hip, knee and ankle joint do they stack up on each other or is your ear in front of your shoulder, your hips behind your shoulder etc.? – dynamic tension

INTERPRETING YOUR RESULTS:

Type 1 Posture:
You have asymmetrical joints, rotation and dynamic tension postural deviations.

Type 2 Posture:
You have minimal asymmetrical joints (1 hip higher than the other and or 1 shoulder higher than the other) but you do have rotation (1 hand more in front of the body compared to the other hand).
You also notice definite dynamic tension postural deviations.
Remember dynamic tension is how good the ear, shoulder, hip, knee and ankle line up or stack up on to each other vertically.
If this is the case then follow the exercises lined out for this condition.

Your Symptoms

As you are reading this you may have the following symptoms:
• Chronic aching in your upper, mid and lower back
• Pulling pain in the one side of your neck when you rotate your head
• Sharp throbbing headaches that gets worse as the day progresses.
• Constantly turning and “snapping your neck” for relief
• Pain, burning down you arm
• Difficulty sleeping because of pain in your forearm
• Painful wrist movements
• Unable to extend and bend your wrist backwards.
• General feelings of hopelessness

All of these symptoms are caused by those postural deviations that you wrote down on your self evaluation form and we are going to correct that.

Fortunately, both Types 1 and 2 postures are treated the same. You may respond fast or slow, but please be patient.

No medicine in the world or any other from of treatment is going to help long term if you do not correct these deviations.

In the long term, your pain will return if you do not address this.

This manual is committed to your health and is only as good as your ability to follow it.

A Reminder about postural deficits when determining which exercise sequence you should follow:

1. Rotation – examples:
When 1 arm is more in front of your body compared to the other side.
When your head is turned to 1 side and not facing straight.
When standing against the wall and the space between the back of 1 shoulder is greater compared o the other side.

2. Asymmetry – examples:
When 1 shoulder is higher than the other, when 1 knee points straight and the other points to the side, when 1 foot is turned out more than the other side.

3. Dynamic tension – examples:
When your back looks like a turtle shell from the side, when your head/shoulder/hip/knee and ankle joints are not stacked upon each other in a straight vertical line (refer to the pictures for illustration)

With the right exercise program, curing your CTS could be just around the corner!

This postural evaluation is only the first step. You need to now turn your knowledge into action by pursuing the exercises that will help correct your problem. We can help! Read about carpal tunnel at home exercises here! Start taking action now!