4 Reasons Your Wrist Pain Keeps Coming Back
Read on to find the likely culprits behind your wrist pain, and what actually helped get my hands back.
1. The Splints, Creams, and Braces You've Already Tried Were Never Built to Actually Fix It
It isn't that nothing works. It's that nothing you tried was built to deal with the source of the problem.
The rigid drugstore splint your doctor swore by. A tube of Voltaren. Biofreeze. Cortisone shots that bought you six weeks the first time, four the second, then nothing. Maybe a cheap brace that stretched out in the wash.
I'd bought so many different things over the years, all designed for something else. Every one built by someone who wasn't thinking about the wrist actually doing the work. None of them lasted. None of them held.
2. The Real Problem Is a Tunnel in Your Wrist
It wasn't one big thing that damaged your wrist. It was the same small movement, a thousand times over. Scrolling on the phone, lifting the baby off the floor, even the lid twisted off the jar, and a lot more.
Every one of those runs through a narrow tunnel on the underside of your wrist. Nine tendons and one nerve share it. They aren't supposed to. There isn't the room.
Each pass, the tendons swell a fraction. Nothing you'd feel. But it's a thousand a day, and the nerve gets pinched a little tighter each time.
That's the click and pop. That's why you wake up and can't make a fist until the kettle's boiled.
3. The Swelling Is What Keeps Bringing the Pain Back
Once the tendons in that tunnel are swollen, they don't get a chance to settle. Your wrist spends most of the time bent in almost the same shape it holds during the movement. Sitting at your laptop. Holding your phone. Sleeping curled up on your side.
That's why resting doesn't break it. Try to do as little as possible with your hands for a week, even two, and the pain calms down. Then try to open a jar, and the pain is back. Usually worse than before.
4. Every "Solution" Doctors Offer Makes Life Harder, Not Easier
This is the part that makes most of us furious.
A cortisone shot buys a few months, then less, then the talk turns to surgery.
A rigid wrist splint locks the joint up so tight you can't type, drive, or normally scroll on your phone.
"Just rest it" isn't something that brings long-lasting relief.
And "we could operate" comes with six weeks of recovery, no guarantee of relief, and the very real chance the pain comes back on the other side.
So What Can You Actually Do About It?
There's only one way to get lasting relief: bring the tunnel swelling down long enough for the tendons no longer get irritated.
And the easiest way to do so is by wearing a brace that should:
✓ Give the tendons even, gentle compression across the whole tunnel, not just squeeze the wrist bones
✓ Hold warmth against the joint the way the hot water bottle does, but for hours instead of minutes
✓ Be comfortable enough to actually wear through the workday and through the night, without going damp or sour
That combination is what breaks the cycle. So a hand therapist by the name of Dr. Simmons worked with the team at Hand Hearth to build one.
A Wrist Brace Designed to Actually Stay On All Day and Through the Night
It's the first brace built around the two things that actually bring the swelling down, worn the way you'd actually need to wear it:
- Fine copper fibre knit into the fabric, holding your own body heat against the wrist. Like a hot water bottle on a sore joint, except you can wear it
- Even compression across the whole tunnel, so the tendons get room, not pressure
- Slim enough to wear under a shirt sleeve at work, soft enough to sleep in without waking up in it
I left the link above if you want to have a look.
If your wrists are anything like mine were, it's worth a look.
– Margaret
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