Top 3 Reasons For Wrist Pain

Are you suffering from wrist pain or getting achiness or throbbing anywhere in this area? Are you having difficulty grabbing stuff or turning keys or knobs, or even just bending your wrist in certain directions it just bites and hurts? Worse yet is it starting to bother you at night? Are you waking up with pain the middle the night, or early in the morning because your wrist is bothering you?

Well through this video today I’m going to cover with you the top three reasons for wrist pain.

Real quick, my name is Dr. David Middaugh. I’m a specialist physical therapist over at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And I’ve seen people with wrist pain off and on over the years. It’s not the most common thing that we treat, but it’s actually quite easy to fix. We can spot the problem a mile away most of the time. And the reality is that most people in the medical industry just don’t know what to do about this type of wrist pain that comes on without any sort of big break like a fracture or big accident like where you fall on your hand and break your wrist. Then it’s obvious what the reason for you hurting your wrist.

But if you didn’t have an injury like that, and you’re getting wrist pain, especially if it’s been there for weeks or months, and it’s become chronic, that’s confusing for most people in the medical profession to treat. So that’s what I’ll be talking to you about today.

The first reason is a stuck wrist joint.

Now, in the wrist, there are, of course from your forearm, there are two bones in your forearm. One is called the ulmer and the other is called the radius. Those are the ones that started your elbow and then they go down towards your wrist. And the radius is the one that’s wider at the wrist. It connects to three, some people would argue four bones directly. So it has connections to four little bones that are called the carpal bones.

They’re called carpals, because they they’re shaped like little pebbles or rocks. And they all kind of move on each other freely. There’s another row of carpals right after that. So you actually have eight carpal bones before you get into the actual long bones of the hand, the ones that look more like fingers.

Those are called the metacarpals. And then you have the phalanges, which make up the actual fingers themselves. But all those little bones within the wrist can get stuck on each other. And oftentimes, that’s one of the main reasons why people have wrist pain, especially the type of wrist pain, where you’re fine when you’re not moving. But then you go to grab something or you twist your arm or move your wrist in a certain way and it just bites you real hard, and you have to kind of stop or get through it.

That almost always is a stuck wrist joint. And that can be fixed that that’s something that at El Paso manual physical therapy here with our manual therapy treatments, we can actually go in and find the bone the joints that are that are stuck and free them up and then teach people how to keep them free for the long term. And it’s almost magical whenever we get a patient that comes in here. And they had been suffering with a wrist problem they’ve been worried about.

They’ve been doing all kinds of things. And then we go in and we poke the we’re able to find the joint and poke it, where it hurts. And they’re like, oh, yep, that’s it, that’s someone that hurts will move their wrists in a way that we know the way the bones moves. So we’ll move the wrist in a way that that sets it off and, and they’re like, yep, that’s it, that’s where it hurts and then we fix the joint, we’d get them moving better, and then they can move their wrists normally again, that’s not quick.

As far as you know, it’s just one treatment and it’s over, we can free up the joint on one treatment. Usually, there’s a few more that need to happen in order to keep the joint free for the long term. But there’s also exercises to do to make sure that those joints print getting stuck over and over again, because that will happen.

If we simply free up the joint and not do exercises to make sure the space around the joints is normalized, the forces on the joints are normalized, then that problem will likely come back again, and that individual can keep getting stuck wrist joints.

The second most common reason for wrist pain is weak muscles.

Now all the muscles in your forearm, almost all of them are dedicated to moving the wrist in the hand. Now, the ones on the front side of your forearm, the part that’s on the same side as your palm, are focused on closing your fingers to form a grip. And the ones on the opposite side on the side of the outer elbow where you know the point of your elbow is, those are the muscles that are focused on opening your hands.

Now the muscles that close your hand are much stronger than the ones that open your hand. I think of it this way. I was, I’m still a nerd, but I was always a nerd. Even as a kid I used to watch the Discovery Channel. And I loved watching Steve Irwin, the crocodile, the crocodile guy and you know, rest in peace. He’s a great guy. His kids are actually coming on onto TV doing great as well.

But I’ll never forget watching Steve Irwin wrestle a crocodile sit on top of it on its neck and hold the jaws of the crocodile show with his bare hands, and then he explained how the muscles of the crocodile’s mouth are very, very powerful and strong in closing, because they have to be able to crush things and bite things and hold on to whatever they’re going to eat without letting go. But the muscles to open the mouth are not very strong, and he can actually hold them shut and overpower them with his bare hands. I thought that was so cool.

But it’s the same thing with your hand, the muscles that open your fingers are very weak, that’s normal. That’s the way they’re supposed to be. You actually don’t have to train them very much. But the ones that close your hands are supposed to be much more powerful. And oftentimes, that’s a big issue. We see people that have very weak grip strength, and that causes them to have some sort of wrist problem and might affect the joints like I just described as one of the number one reasons to get wrist pain.

But if that grip is very weak, it can definitely change the way that other things are moving within the wrist not just the muscles, but there are tons of tendons in there. There’s some cartilage in the wrist as well, that is important to be in a certain position to move right. And the muscle strength of the grip can be a big factor. And it’s not as straightforward as just going to go get a grip ball, I mean, you have to have some serious grip strength.

Some people need to have grip strength, over 100 pounds, 100 pounds of force. If you think about it, that means that person should be able to pick up a weight that weighs 100 pounds and hold on to it, not overhead or even straight up in front of them, but at least dangle it within their grip and be able to sustain it that would be 100 pounds of grip strength. So you can go backwards or forwards in there. Some people need to have 120. Some people need to have 70 or 80.

Generally, as you age, it’s acceptable to have weaker grip strength, but I’m always from the angle of if you’re in here in my office and you’re having a wrist problem and you’re 80 years old, and your grip strength is normal. Well, according to your age group, while we got to get higher and make sure that wrist paint is not ever coming back. I want you to have the grip strength of a 50 or 40 or 30 year old, so that you’re not dealing with any wrist problems as you go into your 90s.

So, grip strength is a big, big deal and there’s different ways to strengthen it. The easiest way that you can do this at home is to go get yourself a grip strengthen are the ones that have the spring on them. I especially love the adjustable ones, they have a knob with the spring on there, and you can work your grip shrink with that.

The third most common reason for a wrist problem. This may not make sense to everybody, but neck and shoulder problems.

The reason for this is if somebody has a neck or shoulder problem, of course, all the nerves that come off the spinal cord, exit right in the in the neck area, and then they go into the shoulder. They go under the collarbone, into the shoulder and some of those nerves go all the way down into the arm past the elbow into the wrists, over to the fingertips. And it is very possible, it happens way more frequently than people think, where their wrist problem is actually coming from their neck or their shoulder.

I’ve had probably about close to half of the patients that come in here, we’re spending quite a bit of time working on their neck and shoulder. And that is the bigger factor in clearing the wrist problem up. So it’s surprising, patients have to kind of sell them a bit on the idea of it because they’re like, oh, I’ll do something on my wrist, fix my wrist because that’s where it hurts. And I have to tell them, I know we’ll do something for your wrist, but we need to really focus on the neck. Otherwise, the wrist won’t get all the way better. You’re only looking at a 50% or less improvement if the majority of the problem is up in the neck and shoulder region.

So consider if you got a wrist problem right now, is your neck also stiff? Is your shoulder stiff? Can you pick up both arms up all the way evenly? Do you have a history of shoulder neck problems in the same set as your wrist problem? What side do you sleep on are your shoulders even because some people are lopsided, they can’t turn their head all the way to one side versus the other.

These are all signs that you’ve probably got a neck and shoulder problem. And that could be contributing to that chronic wrist problem that you’re dealing with and are looking for help with.

Thanks for watching, I hope that this video was helpful for you. If you thought that it was and you’re looking for help with your wrist problem, you think that we might be able to help you out, here’s what you need to do next, go up to the top of our website here and hit the cost and availability button. Once you hit that button, you’ll be taken to a page where you’ll be able to leave us for details about you.

We want to hear all about your wrist problem. And once you submit that form, it’ll take you less than a minute, then one of my staff will call you back as soon as they can. And they just want to talk with you on the phone to hear all the details about your wrist problem. We’ll give you as much time as you need. And we want to make sure that it’s a type of wrist problem that we can help out so that we won’t waste your time.

And if it’s appropriate for you to come into the clinic, they’ll tell you the next steps on how to do that. Versus if it’s not a good situation for us to see you, it’s not a good wrist problem that we’ll be able to help you out with. We don’t waste your time, we want to send you to the right person to make sure that you get your wrist issue fixed as fast as possible for the long term. So do that please hit that cost availability button, and then leave us your details and we’ll be happy to talk to you. I hope that we can be a part of your success story real soon. Have a great day.