One of my patients came to me with a complaint of pain and severe tingling in her forearms, hands and fingers. The pain was so severe that she woke up at night. In addition, they interfered with her work - my patient was a masseuse. She turned out to have carpal tunnel syndrome.
Another disease that causes discomfort in the hands and sometimes feet is Raynaud's syndrome. Even short-term exposure to cold causes the fingers to turn white and then go numb. The same thing can happen after stress. What to do if you are diagnosed with one of these diseases?
A canal passes through the wrist - the so-called carpal tunnel. Inside it is the median nerve, which provides sensation to the fingers.
With carpal tunnel syndrome, compression of the median nerve occurs as a result of tissue swelling in the carpal tunnel. Swelling most often occurs due to repetitive movements of the hand and wrist associated with certain tasks, from typing or massaging to kneading dough, especially when a person performs the movements incorrectly, putting additional stress on the wrists.
But tissue swelling and, as a result, compression of the nerve can have other causes: for example, a lack of thyroid hormone, arthritis, diabetes, menopause, fractures and dislocations of the wrist. Doctors also include the habit of sleeping on your stomach with your arms under you as possible causes.
If you notice that your handwriting has changed, or that you have difficulty typing or making any other fine movements with your fingers, carpal tunnel syndrome may be the cause. If these symptoms persist for a week, you should consult a doctor. Your doctor may suggest that you wear a special splint to keep your wrists elevated. This splint allows you to move your fingers freely, and fixes the hand in a neutral position. The splint can be worn during the day or just at night. In some cases, it allows you to relieve pain in just a day. However, you may have to wear it for several months. To treat carpal tunnel syndrome, massage the hand and fingers with ice, paraffin or hot wax.
If there is no improvement within a few weeks, a cortisone injection may be the next step. This drug reduces swelling around the tendons. Some patients experience improvement after a cortisone injection and the disease goes away. For others, it only relieves the attack, and a year later they have to see a doctor again with the same problem.
As a last resort, they resort to surgical treatment. In a procedure called nerve release, the surgeon cuts the ligament that forms the roof of the carpal tunnel to relieve pressure on the median nerve.
To prevent the development of carpal tunnel syndrome, one should not forget about preventive measures.
If you feel a sharp pain in your wrist, stop working and give your hands a rest. You cannot continue to work through pain. Self-massage your fingers and wrists. If the pain is very severe, apply ice to your wrists - it will subside in 10-15 minutes. If there is no ice, immerse your hands in very cold water.
The most likely cause of pain is that you put excessive stress on your wrists, such as wringing out laundry or playing the piano. The cause of carpal tunnel syndrome can also be any activity in which the wrists are constantly bent and unbent or held in an uncomfortable position for a long time, as happens when working for long hours at a computer or on a typewriter. Here are some exercises to help relieve arm tension.
1. Spread your fingers away from each other several times and bring them together again.
2. Bend your wrists in the direction opposite to their normal position.
3. Stretch your fingers, elbows and shoulders to relax them.
4. Place your palms together and press the heels of your palms against each other. Then repeat the same movement, pressing only with your fingers. In this case, the bases of the palms should not touch.
5. Squeeze and unclench the elastic rubber ball.
Patients with Raynaud's syndrome have different complaints. At the slightest cold or nervous stress, their hands and feet quickly lose sensitivity, and their fingers turn white and go numb.
Raynaud's syndrome is associated with disruption of blood vessels. During an attack, they shrink, restricting blood flow to the skin. Due to lack of blood, the fingers turn white and sometimes even turn blue. When blood circulation is restored, they regain their natural color. In addition, patients experience numbness, tingling, and in some cases pain.
Women are more susceptible to this disease than men.
Keep in mind that symptoms of Raynaud's disease may also indicate other diseases, such as scleroderma, systemic lupus erythematosus, or rheumatoid arthritis. Therefore, if such symptoms appear, you should definitely consult a doctor.
The main goal of all methods of preventing Raynaud's syndrome is to maintain normal blood circulation in the fingers and toes. Getting enough blood will keep them warm and pink.
Try not to get too cold or nervous. This will help you avoid compressing the blood vessels in your fingers and toes. If your fingers are frozen, immediately play “windmill”. This exercise will help you warm your hands and prevent an attack. Rotate your arms in the direction down - back - up - forward with a frequency of 80 rotations per minute. Centrifugal force, together with gravity, increases blood flow to the fingers.
To restore normal blood circulation, you need to stop smoking, as it causes narrowing of the arteries. Smokers who are somewhat hypersensitive to cold often experience numbness in their hands and feet. You should not drink a lot of coffee because caffeine also causes blood vessels to constrict.
Some medications can also worsen the symptoms of Raynaud's disease. In particular, beta blockers, which are often prescribed to lower blood pressure, and ergotamines, used as a headache remedy.
There are effective medications to treat Raynaud's syndrome. In most cases, doctors prescribe nifedipine, a calcium blocker that works successfully in about 75% of cases.
Perfectly relieves vascular spasms and fish oil. Taking fish oil capsules daily for 2-3 months relieves numbness in the hands and feet.
Raynaud's syndrome causes great inconvenience. However, a little training significantly reduces the attacks. Its essence is to train your hands to warm up at low temperatures. It is better to conduct such training in autumn or winter.
Take two basins and fill them with warm water. Immerse both hands in the first basin for 5 minutes. Then quickly get dressed, take the second basin to a cold place (for example, on the balcony) and immerse your hands in it for 5 minutes. Return to the warm room and place your hands in the bowl of warm water again. Repeat this procedure every other day (3 times a day) for a month.
This method will help improve blood circulation without drugs. Its essence lies in the fact that you train the blood vessels to remain dilated, despite the low ambient temperature. Ultimately, such training will allow you to overcome reflex vasoconstriction without the help of warm water.
Symptoms of Raynaud's disease can also occur during emotional stress. And here self-hypnosis will play a positive role, helping to relax the muscles, prevent vascular spasms and thereby avoid an attack.
Human hands consist of 8 carpal bones, 5 metacarpal bones, soft tissues and phalanges of the fingers that surround the bone base. Classical anatomy suggests that the wrist segment should not be classified as a hand, which is why the hands are exposed to injuries and various infections, which are accompanied by severe pain. Also, pain in the hand can occur due to a ruptured or sprained ligament, a fracture, or other mechanical damage. In addition to these causes, injuries can occur after severe muscle strain.
Pain in the hands can be caused by strong physical exertion on the hands, or by working hard with the hands.
If you know that you can't overwork your hands, try to strain your hand less. Pain in the hand can occur due to diseases of the muscles, bones, and nerves. If the pain does not go away for a long time, you should urgently seek help from a doctor.
1. Due to dislocation and sprain, an x-ray is urgently needed; if it does not show damage, the doctor will examine the cervical spine, because pain in the hand may occur due to a herniated intervertebral disc or if the intervertebral disc protrudes.
2. If the joints in your hands hurt, this may indicate that you have arthritis or inflammation.
3. When a fracture occurs, a person cannot always identify it. A person may hit his arm and does not know that he has a fracture, thinking that the severe pain is due to a bruise. And only when he begins to suffer does he seek help from a doctor.
4. Due to myocardial infarction or a heart attack, pain from the hands can radiate upward to the left arm, with chest pain appearing, it becomes difficult for a person to breathe, the skin becomes very pale, nausea, shortness of breath, anxiety, and cold sweat appear. You need to call an ambulance immediately.
1. Pain in the hand lasts more than 2 days.
2. The pain begins to intensify when a person is exposed to physical activity.
3. The sensitivity of the nerves decreases.
4. The hand becomes deformed and is very difficult to move.
5. Limbs swell.
1. In case of rheumatoid arthritis, this disease can be diagnosed after an x-ray, examination and tests. In cases where the patient has pain in a joint that is located symmetrically, inflammation has also appeared, and mobility of the limbs has decreased, the doctor will be able to diagnose rheumatoid arthritis. This is a common disease, most often it affects women, but it also affects men. It is very difficult to treat this disease. Joint tissues are gradually destroyed due to the inflammatory process. Bones, cartilage tissue and joints begin to be affected. Most often, pain occurs in the hands, and can also occur in the ankles, knees, and ankles.
2. With gout, when substances gradually accumulate in the joints of the hands, they are formed due to purines, which are found in meat. In cases where a person likes to abuse meat products and because of this his metabolism is disrupted, pain appears in the hands, while the legs swell and become very red. A person suffers from severe pain in the hands; they have a burning, pulsating and bursting character. The pain subsides in the morning and intensifies at night. What can cause pain? Abuse of alcohol, meat, fatty foods. Also, those who love baths suffer from this disease.
3. Pain in the hands with osteoarthritis; with this disease, pain in the hands spreads to the thumbs, elbow and shoulder joints. The pain is dull in nature and intensifies during the day with physical activity. The next morning the pain subsides. At the same time, the joints begin to click and crunch.
4. Pain due to arthritis of the hands. A person feels constant pain in the joints of the hand, which does not depend on the time of day. In the morning it is difficult for a person to move a joint. At the same time, the skin turns very red and a fever appears. If the pain is very severe and the hand swells, this means acute arthritis. Chronic arthritis occurs when a joint becomes deformed or destroyed. Arthritis occurs due to an infection that can enter the joints and blood vessels.
5. Pain in the hands due to prolonged work at the computer. Pain occurs due to a pinched nerve, heavy load and lack of fluid flow between the joints. It is very difficult to treat this disease, but you can try to prevent it.
You should immediately contact such specialists - a traumatologist, neurologist or rheumatologist. Pain in the hand brings a person very great discomfort; it prevents him from fully working with his hand. Only timely treatment will help get rid of it. The pain will stop bothering you after the damaged tissues heal and function is restored. But you need to remember that during treatment the hand should be at rest, there is no need to heavily load it, on the contrary. It is best to develop bone.
Rheumatoid arthritis cannot be completely cured, but inflammation can be relieved and deformation that occurs in the joints can be stopped. To do this, you must undergo a course of anti-inflammatory therapy.
Pain in the hands due to gout can be relieved with the help of analgesics and anti-inflammatory drugs; drugs based on indomethacin are most often used.
It is very important to follow a diet, this will help get rid of pain, the doctor may prescribe medications that will help reduce the level of acid in the blood.
If pain in the hand is caused by osteoarthritis, you must first relieve inflammation and pain, and then protect the cartilage tissue.
For arthritis of the hands, painkillers, antibiotics, and anti-inflammatory drugs are used to help get rid of the cause that caused the disease.
If pain in the hand occurs due to inflamed ligaments and tendons (peritendinitis), it can be relieved only with the help of anti-inflammatory drugs, but the hand should be at rest.
So, when treating pain in the hand, it is very important to identify the cause of its occurrence, only then the treatment will be effective.
There is no such person who would not encounter various pains in the legs; from time to time, the legs hurt and ache in both young and old people, and children. The appearance of pain in the legs can be associated with many factors; unfortunately, people are in no hurry to go to the doctor if they experience regular pain in the limbs, although they can be a sign of the onset of a serious illness, and timely contact with a specialist can significantly improve the condition and prevent the development of pathology. Does your leg hurt from hip to knee, pain in your right side or pain in your sacrum, or maybe your lower leg hurts? Let's look at the causes and main symptoms of such frequent but unpleasant conditions.
Pain in the thigh or other parts of the legs, including the posterior part of the lower extremities, can be of a different nature and have different localization; it can bother the foot, knee or toes. They can be periodic or constant, they can be pulling, aching or acute. Patients often complain that a lump on the foot near the big toe hurts; such pain usually begins at night, and by the morning the joint is swollen and inflamed. Sometimes it is associated with gout or arthritis. Pregnant women often experience pain in the leg from the hip to the knee - the growing fetus can pinch certain nerve endings.
Often a person may experience pain in the legs at night, and by the morning they completely disappear; often the arms and legs hurt at night.
Typically, pain is a signal from the body about the presence of a disease, which can be determined by a specialist after examination, history taking and based on the results of laboratory and instrumental studies.
Anatomically, the lower limbs are a complex system of muscles, joints, bones and nerves, each of the components of this complex can malfunction and cause pain in the leg. Pain in the legs is not always a sign of any pathology in the body; every person is familiar with pain in the muscles after strong physical activity, for example, legs hurt after training or long walks; women often complain that their legs hurt during pregnancy due to increasing weight. My legs often hurt after running, especially during the first workouts.
Often, when severe pain in the legs appears, a person does not know which doctor to contact, especially if these sensations are not associated with excessive physical activity or injury.
Before asking the question of how to get rid of leg pain, it is necessary to determine the causes of their occurrence. Often pain occurs as a result of injury or can be a consequence of it. If a patient experiences constant nagging pain in the legs, the factors causing their occurrence may be the following:
With radiculitis, any movement causes pain to the patient; this disease is associated with pressure on the nerve endings due to a decrease in the clearance between the vertebrae. Typically, such pain occurs when bending the body in the lower back, the patient feels severe pain in the place where the sacrum is, he is very worried about the lower back, since there is pressure on the gluteal nerve, and the pain in the back radiates to the leg.
Pain in the sacrum, radiating to the leg, can occur not only with radiculitis; often when pain occurs in the legs, its causes lie in osteochondrosis of the lumbar region. The sacrum may hurt on only one side, for example, if the sacrum hurts on the left, this may indicate a disturbance in cardiac activity and problems with the lungs, while pain is felt in the left buttock, radiating to the leg, and the left leg hurts. The patient experiences discomfort when bending the leg at the hip joint, and is bothered by constipation. Pain in the sacrum in men can be associated with inflammation of the prostate gland, and in women, pain in the sacrum can be associated with cancer in the uterine area. Pain in the left leg may indicate problems with blood vessels, as well as some heart pathologies.
If the sacrum hurts on the right, this indicates the presence of disturbances in the right side of the pelvic spine, while the patient’s right buttock hurts, problems with the gastrointestinal tract develop, and the right leg hurts. Such symptoms, especially pain in the left leg or along the sciatic nerve, require immediate medical attention.
Arthritis is inflammation of the joints, and this disease can be caused by various reasons: injuries, genetic factors, taking certain medications, hypothermia.
With arthritis, patients are often bothered by aching pain in the legs, especially when bending. With this disease, the leg often hurts under the knee and in the area of other joints. Treatment of arthritis is usually complex, it requires complex measures and does not always lead to complete recovery, especially in old age - at this time osteoporosis develops, so the person becomes shorter.
Flat feet occur due to inflammation of the muscle of the foot that supports its arch; the cause of the disease can be polio suffered in childhood, and flat feet can also be a consequence of diabetes mellitus. Often, flat feet are the answer to the question of why the legs hurt below the knees, especially in the area of the foot and ankle. As the disease progresses and there is no proper treatment, the patient practically cannot walk, the tendons of his legs hurt, and he begins to complain that his knee and other joints hurt.
Often, nagging pain in the legs is a symptom of serious problems with the arteries, which can be caused by diseases:
Atherosclerosis is a leader among arterial diseases; it is more common in men over 40 years of age; the causes of the disease usually lie in poor diet and bad habits: smoking, alcohol. Also, the formation of cholesterol plaques can be caused by diabetes, liver problems, and hereditary diseases. With atherosclerosis, the legs usually hurt severely along the artery, the pain can be localized under the knee at the back, these pains do not depend on movements and can be accompanied by cramps, weakness, numbness and cooling of the extremities. Treatment of atherosclerosis is prescribed by a cardiologist or vascular surgeon.
With diabetes, legs hurt for two reasons:
With diabetes, not only the legs, but also the sacrum can become ill; the disease can affect people of all ages; children are increasingly affected by it.
Trauma is the most common cause of leg pain. An injury can cause damage to the joint, which can become very swollen. The patient complains of severe pain in the injured limb, especially when flexing and extending it; it is often impossible to step on it; the pain can radiate to the internal organs.
If you have an ankle injury, your leg hurts below the knee in front; if a hematoma has formed in this place, you need to apply a cold compress.
If after an injury your leg is swollen and painful, this may be a sign of a broken bone in the limb, so you should immediately go to the emergency room.
Varicose veins of the lower extremities are one of the most common causes of leg pain; the intensity of pain depends on the stage of the disease. In addition to varicose veins, pain can be caused by other venous pathologies, such as thrombophlebitis or postthrombophlebitis syndrome.
Pain in the legs with varicose veins is often accompanied by swelling of the affected limb, which usually goes away after sleep, a change in its color and the appearance of swollen veins and venous nodules under the skin, which begin to turn black over time. The localization of pain can be different: if the leg hurts in the thigh and groin area, this may indicate varicose veins of the small pelvis; if the lower leg hurts, then most likely the great saphenous vein is damaged by varicose veins; it can also cause pain behind the knee. Varicose veins often occur during pregnancy.
Treatment of varicose veins is carried out comprehensively; the most effective treatment method is removal of the damaged vein.
Pain in the legs during pregnancy occurs very often, their causes can be different. The birth of a child is stressful for women, and the pregnant woman’s body reacts differently to the changes that occur, these changes are especially noticeable at the 38th week. Women often complain that when the 38th week of pregnancy arrives, not only the lowering stomach hurts, but also the legs, it becomes difficult to walk, usually these pains go away when lying down. Main complaints:
The attending physician may prescribe medications and special exercises to alleviate the condition. Pain in the lower abdomen requires urgent consultation with a gynecologist.
Often foot pain occurs due to damage to the nails, this can occur as a result of injury or due to a fungal disease. If after an injury the toenail turns black, this indicates hemorrhage; usually these symptoms go away without any treatment. However, if the nail turns black but there is no injury, this may be a sign of a fungal infection of the feet, especially if the feet begin to itch and smell bad. If your toenails hurt, you should immediately consult a dermatologist and strictly follow his instructions.
If your little toe hurts, it is most often caused by wearing tight shoes.
If a child complains of leg pain, parents should pay close attention to this. Often a child’s leg hurts after a DTP vaccination. The vaccine is administered to children under 1.5 years of age; at this age, the child cannot yet talk about his feelings, and parents should carefully monitor his condition. If a child’s legs hurt at night, he usually has restless sleep, and often cries, in order to relieve painful symptoms, you can anoint the injection site with Troxevasin ointment. Why does my child's legs hurt? It is better to immediately contact a pediatrician; he alone can determine the cause.
Often the cause of pain in the legs is an alcoholic drink consumed in excessive quantities. The reason for this is that any alcoholic drink negatively affects blood vessels, including those of the lower extremities, especially if a person has a predisposition to varicose veins. If your legs hurt after drinking alcohol, it should be completely excluded from your diet.
The leg may bother an athlete if his daily jogging involves long distances. It is also necessary to run in properly selected shoes so that the soles do not experience strong stress when in contact with the ground. During training, you need to make sure that your feet do not get cold, and if during training your leg hurts in the groin or you feel pain in the sacrum, you should stop exercising. If after running your legs hurt or you feel pain in your right side, you need to take a break from exercise.
After exercise, your legs may ache; this sensation usually goes away after sleep or daytime rest. If the tendons are very bothersome when extending the leg, it is better to consult a doctor.
The causes and treatment of pain problems in the legs can be very different: injury, bad habits, various diseases, the symptoms of which are associated with pain in the lower extremities. For any pain in the legs, it is better to consult a doctor, since self-medication can lead to undesirable consequences.