I was suffering from a re-irritation of my left ulnar nerve for about two weeks. Last time it just went away after a week or so off. This time it wasn't going away. It's almost embarrassing to say but I re-irritated it mocking/explaining a movement with my arms...no load. Anyways, I wasn't sure if it was lack of sleep, poor nutrition, stress... because it started a couple of days before Jackson was born.
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| The purple is where the numbness kicks in. |
I decided to just work around it and continue with the WS4SB program. I had to avoid things like chins ups and supinated grip barbell curls because of pain but quite honestly I think the curls are helping the pain go away.
They had this following pic of a reason that may compress the ulnar nerve:
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| Many people sleep with their arms curled up like this. Sleeping with the elbow bent can aggravate symptoms of ulnar nerve compression and cause you to wake up at night with your fingers asleep. |
Click here to read more up on Ulnar Nerve Entrapment.
Guilty. I thought I was the only person that slept like this but I guess not. It's almost hard to admit I sometimes sleep like this because of how funny it looks but whatever. In the past, I assumed I had odd wrist pain from sleeping in this position but I got one of those contour pillows that helped me out. It since then has been a little deflated and not supporting my sleep as much. I found myself sleeping in ways to elevate my head pillow again. It may be pillow shopping time.
Missed my workout as the Women's Only Class was huge so I had to help out.
Weird, I kind of sleep like that as well, but with a body pillow (helps my back). Also embarrassing, my arm/nerve issue was caused stretching first thing in the morning under no load as well. Only weird thing is my numbness is in the center of my palm, not the ring/pinky finger area. Oh well...I still get numbness and tingling sometimes but it doesn't bother me ever.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I think I'm going to schedule an appointment with Physicians Plus to get my shoulder worked on. I think there was a $20 coupon in the bag they gave us.
@Jim, First consultation with the physicians plus guys is complimentary. Definitely go see them.
ReplyDeleteI just did some reading on the medial nerve, not sure if I'll use it as my learned thing for the day and write more on it but since you do a bunch of computer work, I'd look in to the possibility of a nerve entrapment in the carpal tunnel.
Rudy, that was a great article that you linked me to (http://goo.gl/5sQBT for anyone that's curious). Pretty much everything in there rang true, and I was especially pleased to read this part:
ReplyDelete"One of the great benefits for using massage to treat nerve compression problems is that massage treatments are frequently applied to the whole length of the nerve and can easily work on multiple sites of compression at the same time."
Sounds like a Physicians Plus visit is in order for sure now. I'm glad I can hopefully get this worked on with massage treatments with them instead of running around to all kinds of specialty docs, doing specialty tests, and killing my wallet.
It's interesting that carpal tunnel seems like the most obvious diagnosis after reading this article, yet both docs I saw previously completely bypassed it. They both mentioned it for a second in the beginning, but after testing my grip strength they never mentioned it again.
Thanks again for the link.
@Jim, Glad I can help! Keep me informed and let me know how it goes.
ReplyDeleteActually I have slept like this (esp with my hands under my head) and woken up with paresthesias in my hand before. Interesting, not just me. Where do you put your hands if you sleep on your side???? :=)
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