When you’re done with work, you want to rest comfortably and enjoy your time off. But if your wrists hurt after work, relaxation becomes more of a challenge. Aches and pains limit your free-time options, and they can be frustrating when they return regularly after every workday.
To find out why your wrists ache in the evenings or after your shift, get in touch with hand and wrist expert Dr. Michael Blackwell at the Center for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine.
Dr. Blackwell treats new and returning patients from two locations in Tomball, Texas, and additional offices in Kingwood and Conroe. Here, he shares some of the reasons that could be causing your wrist pain.
You need to know about anatomy before you can successfully relieve your wrist pain. Your wrists contain bones, ligaments, muscles, tendons, and nerves. You need to know which of these components is causing your pain problem before you learn how to treat it.
Are you experiencing tendon or ligament overstretching or tearing? Tendons and ligaments connect your bones and muscles, and can suffer painful damage if you stretch your wrist, hand, or fingers in the wrong way. Inflamed tendons may develop tendonitis.
In the carpal tunnel of your wrists, bones and ligaments create a small passageway for the median nerve. If your ligaments swell or thicken due to repetitive stress, the median nerve may become entrapped, pinched, or compressed.
This common hand and wrist condition, known as carpal tunnel syndrome, produces pain, numbness, tingling, and weakness. You might feel symptoms as far up the arm as your shoulder.
Many forms of arthritis, such as osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, can harm the joints between your wrist bones, making it progressively more painful and difficult to use your hands and wrists.
If your wrist pain consistently follows you home from work, then your job patterns, habits, or activities likely play a role.
When you work with technology, including computers, touchscreens, and other electronic devices, your workday puts your wrists through extensive repetitive stress.
You might not realize how hard your wrist has to work in all of the typing, mouse maneuvering, or touchscreen manipulating. But it’s absolutely enough to cause wear-and-tear and overuse injuries.
Working with heavy tools or machinery also puts you at a higher risk of hand and wrist problems. The powerful vibrations in machinery stress your wrists, especially if you also have to use a strong grip to control a vibrating device that’s heavy or weighty.
If your work contributes to your wrist problems, you may benefit from ice therapy, heat therapy, splinting, bracing, or even just some rest time. Targeted stretches and timed breaks can also lessen the painful impacts of your work on your hands and wrists.
With the right combination of pain management support, diagnosis, and treatment, your wrist pain won’t bother you so much, letting you get on with the rest of your life. Most of Dr. Blackwell’s wrist pain patients don’t need surgery.
If you regularly suffer from wrist pain in the evening or at night, reach out to Dr. Blackwell and the hand and wrist team at the Center for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine today. Schedule over the phone or book online now.
