Conquering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Other Repetitive Strain Injuries: A Self-Care Program [Paperback]

Sharon J. Butler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1996

This book offers a complete self-care program for those at risk and those already suffering from one of the most common and most debilitating occupational injuries. Guided by symptom charts, you select the best exercises for the movement patterns required by your work and learn how to restore the range of motion to overworked hands and arms.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sharon Butler was working as a massage therapist and Hellerwork practitioner when she developed carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis. Unable to sleep through the night because of the pain and concerned about her livelihood, she built upon her knowledge of connective tissue and developed a series of stretching exercises to gently relieve the tension in her body. After daily stretching in this way, her pain soon subsided. To prove that these exercises weren't just a fluke, Butler intentionally overworked her body to bring back her symptoms. While this may not have been the smartest move, her stretching program again relieved her pain.

The magic behind her powerful exercises is their focus on fascial tissue. Fascia, which is stronger than steel, holds the body together. It wraps around muscle fibers, bones, and tendons. (If you've ever looked at an uncooked piece of chicken and noticed the glistening white layer over the meat, you've seen fascia.) In people who overwork their bodies, the fascia hardens, a natural response to prevent future injury. Unfortunately, this stiffness worsens with repeated insults to the body. Muscles, nerves, and tendons tense up and inflame even more and may even adhere to each other. Metabolic waste products can build up and become trapped instead of being carried away by the lymph system, and even more pressure is placed on the affected body tissues.

Enter Butler's exercises. The book is arranged to let you pick and choose the correct stretches to suit your needs. Too much typing, guitar playing, or gardening? Stiff neck, tingling fingers, sore upper arms, or all three? However you developed your repetitive strain injury and whatever your upper-body symptoms (or if you're smart and you'd like to prevent such problems), there are multiple stretches in Conquering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome to suit your needs. The book is arranged to help users develop a personalized stretching program with more than 40 stretches for the upper body, forearms, wrists, fingers, and thumbs to choose from. Butler thoroughly explains the importance of stretching and the correct (and incorrect) way to do it, and the exercises are lucidly illustrated.

From Booklist

After briefly introducing carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive strain injuries, Butler presents a series of stretches and simple exercises to help relieve pain. Because gentle stretching restores connective tissue to its normal, nonbinding state, these exercises promise to alleviate suffering. Charts detailing recommended stretches for specific problem areas as well as for persons engaged in different activities precede the illustrated (with large line drawings) directions for upper body, forearm, wrist, finger, and thumb exercises. Butler stresses the importance of stretching in a careful, consistent manner. Sue-Ellen Beauregard --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 edition (April 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572240391
• ISBN-13: 978-1572240391
• ASIN: 1572240393
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #47,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #69 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Aging > Chronic Pain

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Relieve the Pain, April 8, 2010

By 

Mark - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Conquering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Other Repetitive Strain Injuries: A Self-Care Program (Paperback)

This book was written by a massage therapist who no doubt has had a lot of experience dealing with repetitive strain injuries such as carpal tunnel. A key idea of the book is that tight tissues, particularly the fascia, are responsible for your pain and symptoms. The cure then, is to stretch them out and get things back to normal. The book intends to accomplish this goal by taking you through a series of stretches for your particular symptomatic area.

A major strength of this book is its sheer ease of using- in other words, its laid out extremely well. The stretching technique is very well explained and the bulk of the book consists of pictures of stretches that you can do for your troubled areas. Additionally, I like the fact that the author discusses the topic of your posture- which is very important because it could be contributing to your problem AND correcting it will help keep you out of trouble!

All-in-all a great resource for people suffering from repetitive strain injuries- and not just for the infamous carpal tunnel- I could see this book being of good use for a lot of other aches and pains as well. Also recommend Treat Your Own Tennis Elbow for those looking for a good resource on that particular condition.

47 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Gentle Stretches But Not Enough For The Very Injured, November 26, 2005

By 

birdie - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Conquering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Other Repetitive Strain Injuries: A Self-Care Program (Paperback)

First I would like to say that Sharon Butler's description of how to stretch gently and effectively is fabulous - her book is probably the best resource for stretching available and I actually think everyone who uses a computer should have this book. It is incredible for prevention I think, healing up to a point, and for body awareness in general.

However...

I want to warn that if you are injured so severely to where you actually can't function (like I was) these stretches are probably not going to be what you need at first & you might be misled into thinking they will cure you. I think that to truly heal yourself from this kind of malady there are two other books that I would say are REQUIRED reading along with this one (ideally, I would recommend reading all 3 at the same time):

IT'S NOT CARPAL TUNNEL SYNDROME! by Suparna Damany and Jack Bellis - to understand the problem from many different angles and

THE TRIGGER POINT THERAPY WORKBOOK by Clair Davies. This book is amazing! Absolutely amazing because it shows you exactly how to get rid of these things called trigger points (yourself) which are usually at the root of MUCH of the pain and dysfunction of RSI's and Carpal Tunnel. He even says that if you have active trigger points, stretching of any kind can actually do more harm than good. I found this to be true, and it looks like some other readers have as well.

Once you have those other two books, Sharon Butler's would be the 3rd I'd recommend (and I think it is essential). I also at a certain point got her online book for healing the thumb injury called DeQuervain's (she has a 6-week stretching program aimed at different injuries) and I thought it was even better for me than CCTS because it was geared towards my particular unremitting problem.

Oh, be warned that if you do get one of her online book one of your first assignments in the program is to order a particular CD. Some might find this irksome, having just purchased a book - but mostly I was just glad to be given such a good program for stretching. I do recommend both this book as well as her online programs.

Well, good luck. Take this SERIOUSLY and save your hands. Go to Barnes and Noble and look through these books there if you're not ready to buy them - but INFORM yourself from all angles because otherwise this can become an incredibly serious problem.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book SAVED my life!, November 1, 2010

By 

P. Sheahan (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Conquering Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Other Repetitive Strain Injuries: A Self-Care Program (Paperback)

I'm a computer geek, having been typing for over 20 years, and also a drummer, so I have been prone to carpal tunnel symptoms for a very long time. Suddenly I went through a terrible ordeal with bilateral carpal tunnel symptoms; terrible pain around the clock in both arms (from the shoulders to finger tips). I was beside myself in pain and was really panicking since I could barely function in the office or at home. Pain killers did not work so it was very frightening and starting to cause depression.

I was forced to get very educated on the subject quickly and found the majority of information on the Internet on how to combat this problem is absolutely FALSE, including vitamins, massages, chiropractors, wrist braces, wrist wrests, and even surgery in many cases. I tried all of these (aside from the surgery) and actually got worse. All it took was finding this ONE book on proper stretching exercises, and I went from 0% to 95% improvement in just 10 days. If you have carpal tunnel symptoms, drop everything and get this book!

No wonder doctors don't mention this solution; it would put them out of business! The Internet seems filled with websites saying to take B-vitamins etc, but most claim you won't see results for up to 3 MONTHS? Yet vitamin testimonials are difficult to find on the Internet at the same time which is odd. Complete nonsense if you ask me; I took B-vitamins faithfully for a month, at the correct dosages and you'd think I'd see SOME improvement, but I only got worse. Wrist braces may help prevent further aggravation while sleeping, but they do not fix the underlying problem! I tried the chiropractor which did nothing, and massages of the forearms absolutely KILLED me the following day.

With this book, simply just follow the exercises VERY gently and slowly. If any pain is felt, don't do that particular exercise and move on to others. There is no set schedule on how often to do the exercises, so I chose to do them morning and evening (took me about an hour each time). At first you may feel like you don't want to do them, like they may do you more harm. For example, doing exercises to bend your wrist backward when you have painful carpal tunnel symptoms, just seems like a bad idea and is uncomfortable to do and your initial gut feeling may be to stop. Again, if you do them VERY gently and softly and stop the exercises just before the pain threshold hits, THIS is what cures the problem. Every day you will go farther and farther this way.

I am shocked out how much misinformation there is on the Internet on this topic. This book was all I needed. However I did also use the product called the "Carpal Solution" at mycarpaltunnel.com while I slept. I am convinced this helped as well. It basically pulls the lower, fatty parts of the palm apart slightly while you sleep, allowing the median nerve to breath a bit, and heal faster. Great concept and I recommend it, but it is this book I am writing a review on that is most essential.

Note the book "It's not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome" also found on Amazon also had some really good info on things to do. I think the ergonomic info was most helpful. After getting so educated on carpal tunnel syndrome, I am convinced poor ergonomics while sitting at my computer (and on my drums) was the source of the problem. You MUST sit up straight at the computer, use a keyboard tray, and do NOT use arm wrests on your chair, and do NOT use a keyboard cushion, and do NOT lean your body forward and wrest your arms on a table as you type, or against the tables edge while typing. That was my whole problem. Elbows MUST be at your sides as you type, and NOT leaning on anything. Follow these guidelines and also using the exercises in this book, you will be set. I will continue to do these exercises for the rest of my life - they feel good and are the right thing to do as you get older. You have to offset all hand/finger/wrist activity on a daily basis with stretches, period. Hope this helps!

P.S. I did seriously consider carpal tunnel surgery as a last resort, as a few people I know had success with it. However, come to find out, carpal tunnel surgery does not have a big success rate overall, or it may only help temporarily. This is because carpal tunnel syndrome in most cases originates in the neck, shoulders and chest (pinched nerves), where pain then travels to the hands. In this case the surgery often doesn't work or only provides temporary relief because the source of the problem is actually elsewhere in the body. Once I found this book on proper stretching and saw the results, I realized surgery is not needed.

UPDATE: Now 3 months later, my carpal tunnel symptoms are still gone and I can do everyday tasks normally. Though if I type for a long time, my hands do get a bit achy. In that case, I pull out the exercises from this book and do them and I always feel much better. One solution I found in the meantime to lessen my typing is software called "Dragon Dictate" which allows me to dictate everything and the computer writes for me. Worth every penny and saves SO much stress on my hands so that I don't have to do the exercises as much.