Hand and wrist pain can be very frustrating – hands useful – and that’s putting it mildly! At our clinic we regularly meet people with wrist & hand pain who’re so bad that they’ve begun to worry about their livelihoods!
But what’s even more frustrating than hand & wrist pain?
Getting complete stuck with hand and wrist pain because the treatment we receive isn’t working!!! (As someone who had crippling wrist problems for an extended once upon a time – I can totally empathise with this.)
The HAPPY NEWS is that most hand and wrist pains get better very quickly – as long as they are getting THE RIGHT KIND OF TREATMENT! Which is generally not ‘just exercises’!
Most hands and wrist issues have SCAR TISSUE that needs to be broken up by someone who knows how. That’s what brings relief.
Then > only once they are feeling good > tendon strengthening exercises to make the improvements lasts!
Most of our patients are surprised that as chiropractors we are interested in helping with their wrist and hand problems. Most people associate chiropractic and chiropractors with spinal pain alone. But the truth is that while many old school chiropractors still see themselves as purists who only treats the spine – many of us have moved forward from that and now use our extensive understanding of the body to treat extremity pain. This is why extremity pains like hand and wrist pain are considered legitimate parts of a modern chiropractors ‘scope of practice’.
Let’s be honest – we the human race don’t exactly have the best track record for keeping up with the exercises our physiotherapist or chiropractors gave us! Or doing yoga 365 days per year. Even though most of us kinda know we should.
But there are a percentage of us who are so desperate to get better that we do actually follow through – and keep consistently doing ‘the exercises’…… Strange but true!!
It’s great that some of us are willing to put in work – but that can lead to a second layer of difficulty for many physiotherapists and chiropractors patients. When the exercise program doesn’t get rid of the pain!? Which is actually quite a common thing.
The reason so many of us struggle to fix ourselves with rehab exercises – pilate – yoga & gym is quite straight forward.
GENERALLY SPEAKING – exercises work better for PREVENTING pain than REDUCING pain!
If for example your have an inflamed spinal joint in your neck that’s been causing you headaches for years – that’s a very very hard thing to shift with exercise.
If your knee pain is caused by a deep knot of scar tissue between layers of muscle – right where they attach to your knee – that’s also a very very hard thing to shift with exercises.
If you have neck and shoulder pain – because the fascia in your upper back has become completely stuck from years of office work – that’s a very very hard thing to shift with exercises.
Sometimes the best way to understand pain treatment is in the same way you understand dental care….
Exercises are as important for treating stubborn pain as brushing & flossing are for managing tooth decay. VERY IMPORTANT.
But there is no use trying to floss yourself for an hour a day if what you really need is root canal.
If you have persistent pain in your tooth – it needs TREATMENT.
If you have persistent pain in a joint or muscle – it needs TREATMENT.
Then once the pain is under control it becomes exercises o’clock!
People often find it strange that at our clinic we combine super modern pain management processes – with more traditional forms of treatment. Most clinics operate an either/or policy after all.
Our policy is to focus on the methods that make the greatest number of people feel better – regardless of whether they are ‘old’ or ‘new’! And also regardless whether they are traditional chiropractors methods or methods from other disciplines like physiotherapy and osteopathy.
Listening to our doctors – we could be forgiven for thinking that the scientific method has been carefully applied to all the ‘old school’ ways of treating pain – and that we found out they are all placebo’s!
But we have done no such thing!!!!
We haven’t spent anything like the time and money it takes to have a comprehensive scientific investigation into which traditional treatments actually work and which don’t!
Some of the old ways were nonsense – and we have proven that.
Some of the old ways were not nonsense like acupuncture and spinal manipulation like chiropractors do – and we have proven that too. This is why spinal manipulation is now part of international guidelines for managing lower back pain for eg.
But most just haven’t been studied.
So this brings us finally to the diff between ‘scientifically unproven’ – and ‘proven unscientific’ – do you understand that those are 2 different things????
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