Hand and Elbow Stretches

Lateral epicondylitis (or more commonly known as tennis elbow) is a condition in which the outer part of the elbow becomes sore and tender. Carpal tunnel syndrome is a condition where you feel a tingling or itching numbness from your palm to your thumb. Alisha Mell from our Oconomowoc, WI- Summit clinic gives us helpful tips on how to alleviate any pain you could be experiencing with your hands and elbows.

Transcript

My name is Alisha Mell, I'm an occupational therapist at the Oconomowoc Wisconsin ATI clinic. I'm going to be talking to you today about two common conditions and giving you a couple exercises to help you at home for some self cares. One of those conditions today is carpal tunnel syndrome, and the other is lateral epicondylitis, or commonly known as tennis elbow.

With carpal tunnel syndrome a lot of times what people will feel is tingling and numbing in your hand, and decreased grasp abilities. Sometimes you can't grab onto the steering wheel easily, or another object, whether it's a pen or a cup. Some of these exercises are going to show you how to alleviate some of those symptoms. When you feel the tingling and numbing, it's coming up into the thumb and these three fingers and that's what this first one is going to show you. It's going to help you with the median nerve, which is the one that is affected and compressed in the carpal tunnel. If you take your hand, and put it up like this, and you tilt it back, and then you turn it around to somebody, I like to say it's 'Give me the money.' Draw your thumb out, and you cross your other hand underneath it and draw the thumb down. You don't want to do it on the tip to cause strain, you want to come here and pull down. Count five, then let go and allow it to come back up. That's one that will help you, the second one is just some easy range of motion. We like to do it in all planes. You tilt back, and come forward. These are very natural movements we use everyday. Very easy, and very slow. The next range is forward and back, I'm going to turn it to the side so you can see. Again, very simple, nothing quick. We don't want to go through these too fast. To combine them all, we make circles. Very easy and basic, make sure we get the corners on each side. Those two simple exercises will help you with the nerve sensation, and your range of motion when dealing with carpal tunnel syndrome.

With lateral epicondylitis, or tennis elbow that it's often referred to, you typically will have a pain pattern that is up near the elbow. Through here. In order to alleviate that pain that you're feeling either isolated, or sometimes it travels down to the hand, we want to lengthen out these tissues. They can get a little cramped up, in order to do so I'm going to show you a stretch to do that, and another self help technique. The first one that we're going to do, you're going to end up here, often times we can't end here, we have to start back. You're going to put your elbow at your side, you're going to drop your wrist to the floor, but your forearm stays parallel to the floor. You're going to pull it back to your body, and you can use the other hand to help you. If that feels easy, I want you to come forward, come to a point of slight resistance, and hold. You can hold that for fifteen to thirty seconds, if easily you can come out a little bit further. Again, start here first. You're going to do this from anywhere from five to eight times, come out, and hold for fifteen to thirty seconds. That will alleviate some of the strain that you are feeling through here, that will help with these symptoms. Second technique you can do is some self massage. If you put your arm out in front of you, and drop down to where you feel a little bone, you're going to come closer to and you'll come back and forth, up and down. And then circles. You're going to want to do this technique two minutes per day, you don't have to keep track of which direction you're going, just make sure you're working on it for two minutes. This will again help you with some of the symptoms from lateral epicondylitis or tennis elbow as we commonly know it.

If these don't alleviate some of your problems, or you have further complications, please come into one of our clinics and we'll help you with a screening.