Here at Lexington Family Chiropractic, we believe that the better you understand how your body works, the better you'll be able to take care of it. It's truly an amazing machine!

From the outside, your wrist seems pretty simple - it moves your hand left, right, up, down and all around. No big deal. Look inside, though, and you'll see a much different story.

Let's Take a Look Inside

Looking at an x-ray of your wrist, you would see that there are many bones involved in this seemingly simple joint. In that wrist x-ray, you would see the distal (far) ends of your two arm bones, the radius and the ulna. After that is a collection of eight carpal bones, roughly arranged in two rows. On the other side of the carpals are the proximal (near) ends of the five hand bones, or metacarpals. So the wrist joint is actually the articulation (joining) of fifteen different bones!

In addition to the bones are the numerous muscles, tendons and ligaments that go into this remarkably flexible joint.

What can go wrong?

When your wrist is operating as it should, you hardly even notice it is there. When it starts to act up, though, it can really get in your way.

A frequent wrist problem caused by repetitive motion is carpal tunnel syndrome. The carpal tunnel is the narrow passage through the carpal bones for all of the nerve and blood supply for the hand. Through repetitive motion of the hand and wrist, inflammation and swelling of the nerve can cause friction as it tries to slide through the carpal tunnel. This can cause significant pain and dysfunction of the hand.

How Can Chiropractic Help?

In many cases, gentle chiropractic manipulation and other conservative modalities can help realign the bones of the wrist so that the nerves can slide freely through, without causing further inflammation.

To find out more about how your amazing wrist works, and how we can help you reduce your pain, please contact us.

Remember, you don't have to live with the pain!