What do you use to pick up your coffee cup or water bottle every day? Your hands and wrists. What do you type with, drive with and load the dishwasher with? Again, your hands and wrists. Clearly, you use your hands and wrists for many of the commonplace tasks you do every day.
These tasks can all become harder to do when the tops of one or both of your wrists are painful. Unfortunately, there are many people dealing with wrist pain. One medical study found that more than 33% of the pregnant women surveyed had hand or wrist pain. Another study reports that 10% of the general population develops hand or wrist pain at some point.
People who are experiencing pain in the top of their wrist can get help from physical therapists. These medical professionals offer many treatment techniques that can reduce your pain, and they can create a treatment plan that’s specific to your needs.
These three PT techniques can help address top of wrist pain:
- Therapeutic exercises — The pain you’re feeling in the top of your wrist may be coming from your forearm or hands. The reason is that pain can radiate from one area of the body to another through your nerves.
For instance, your wrist pain may be coming from a strained muscle in your forearm. Physical therapists can use therapeutic exercises to stretch and strengthen the affected muscle. In turn, this can help decrease your pain.
- Soft tissue mobilization — Ever seen a physical therapist massaging a person’s arm or leg with their hands? What you likely saw is a technique that physical therapists call soft tissue mobilization (STM), which is a type of manual therapy. This technique involves physical therapists using their hands to release tension in soft tissue. It can also help break up scar tissue. As a result, having STM can lead to less inflammation and pain.
- Joint mobilization — Your wrist is a joint, and this fact makes it a prime candidate for a PT method called joint mobilization. This is another type of manual therapy. Joint mobilization involves physical therapists using their hands to move the wrist through its normal range of motion (ROM). The goals of this technique include:
- Mobilizing wrist soft tissue.
- Improving ROM.
- Decreasing pain caused by soft tissue restrictions.
Border Therapy Services offers effective treatment for top of wrist pain
Not sure where to turn for help treating your top of wrist pain? Our team at Border Therapy Services is ready to help you address your wrist pain. We’ll start by doing a free screening of your wrist to determine the cause of your pain. Then, our experienced physical therapists will build you a personalized therapy plan, which may include the therapy methods discussed above. In addition, you can use our at-home care or virtual therapy services to treat your wrist pain from home.
Contact our team today for more information about our wrist pain treatment options or to schedule an initial appointment to begin treating your pain.