Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is metabolic: Hand pain? Don’t downplay it.
Diario Reforma/ Israel Sanchez
Tonight, for the third time this week, she woke up again with that tingling and numbness in her hand, and the pain in her wrist and the weakness are getting worse.
It must be, he suddenly thinks, remembering something he read on the internet, because of those long days in front of the computer, typing and dragging the mouse from one side to the other; and what about the hours spent holding the cell phone in any imaginable position.
Dr. Alejandro Badia, a physiologist and orthopedist specializing in hand and upper extremity surgery, has something to reveal about this supposed “occupational disease”: “I want to make it very clear that this is a huge myth, that computers, keyboards, and phones don’t damage the hands,” shares the doctor, founder of the Badia Hand to Shoulder Center in Doral, Florida, in a remote interview.
“I have never in my life performed surgery—and I think I’ve probably done 6,000 carpal tunnel releases, which are the most common cases any hand surgeon sees—and I’ve never seen a teenager, who are the ones who are on their phones and computers all the time these days. It’s a huge misconception that people keep talking about, and there’s really no evidence that it happens that way.”
Alejandro Badia
It’s not, therefore, a problem caused by repetitive activities like typing or other manual labor—although these can be aggravated—but rather the symptoms of something that requires a different kind of specialized care.
“What does happen is that some people suffer from certain very common conditions or may have median nerve compression, but it’s more of a metabolic disorder.
“It’s a metabolic problem related to the nine tendons that pass through a narrow tunnel (in the hand), but they thicken. And that happens due to fluid retention, which is also a hormonal effect,” explains Badía, former president of the International Society of Sports Traumatology of the Hand (ISSPORTH) and member of several orthopedic societies.
