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Glucosamine and Carpal Tunnel?
DemonCat asks: "A friend suggested to me that I try a glucosamine supplement to treat carpal tunnel, saying that it had worked for him. According to its proponents, it stimulates the healing and growth of inflamed connective tissue. Wary of herbal, alternative or otherwise little-tested treatments, I was curious what experience other Slashdotters had had with glucosamine." We have done quite a few articles on wrist pain and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. It's pretty much an on-the-job risk for most of us working in the industry, and lots of folks ask about treatments. It would be nice to hear what folks think of the Glucosamine option. Does it work? Or is this more baloney for the meat grinder?
And there's a fairly good chance it will help, big pharmaceutical companies pay a lot of money for people to research 'folk/native' remedies (then of course they patent them, one of them even patented rice) and make a fortune, because there are a lot of genuine cures to be found.
Let us know how it goes, and if by some strange coincidence you swell up to twice your normal size and turn green, well, I never said this.
~ppppppppö
I am a medical student. Not a doctor. By law, I can't prescribe jack shit and I am no more qualified to give medical advice than an aborginal tribesman.
I *can*, however, tell you that carpal tunnel as suffered by geeks is usually a stress injury, not a degenerative or autoimmune cartilage disease as found in arthritis. What's the difference? Use good ergonomics and geek carpal tunnel often goes away, never to return. Arthritis can be relieved, but is currently always progressive. Stress injuries can be healed. Degenerative processes generally can't.
That means that you definitely don't *need* glucosamine; you can heal just fine without it. However, there's still the question of whether or not it'll help you heal. The literature, at least as far as I can see right now, doesn't contain any data on glucosamine for acute injuries like this; the studies are all for arthritis. In arthritis, it does seem to help, though that's not proven. If taken in reasonable doses, it should not harm you.
It is worth considering the placebo effect, which is really very powerful. If you think glucosamine will help you, you are very likely to experience some improvement. Therefore, if you have the money to spend and you truly believe it might help, it may well be worth your while to try it. (The best part about the placebo effect is that it'll work even if the supplement you end up buying isn't really glucosamine (which is a big problem with most natural medicines, BTW)).
I have also done you the courtesy of looking up some existing non-surgical therapies for CTS; you may wish to ask a doctor about them. Steroid injections have been indicated to help reduce the inflammation where aspirin and ibuprofen can't, although some studies indicate that this is only temporary relief. At least one clinical trial has shown that certain yoga postures can have a beneficial effect. (The postures are in JAMA, November 11th 1998. The AMA may still have that issue available online.) There is weak anecdotal evidence for vitamin B6 helping; could take that along with the glucosamine. (Again, assuming you don't start taking massive doses and assuming you use good biomechanics, this can't hurt.)
Executive Summary: Can't hurt, small chance of helping, here's some other stuff to check out, try not to get scammed, and USE BETTER ERGONOMICS!
Excuse me, but as your inflamed tissue is having problems because there isn't enough room for it -- in what way would growing more tissue help? Having more tissue in that small area would make it worse.
(No, I wasn't touching my keyboard when I heard of this -- Festival was reading the news to me...)
- Good ergonomics, especially keyboard placement.
- Better awareness of other stresses in your life. Check out The Mind Body Prescription . It is a book by a respected, practicing physician who points out how your repressed anger and stress can contribute to (back/wrist/etc.) pain. Literally, psychosomatic illness. I thought it was bullshit until I was desperate enough to try it, and it made things a lot better.
- Vitamins: nothing radical. A good multivitamin, a Vitamin B supplement, and SAMe. This is the #1 prescribed anti-arthritic in Germany, and is sold in the US as a nutritional supplement in places like GNC. It also supposedly has anti-depressive properties. A lot of studies show that increasing one of the B vitamins helps in Carpal Tunnel.
The bottom line is that, about 1.5 years ago, I couldn't work at a keyboard for more than 15 minutes without a lot of pain, numbness, etc. Now, I don't think about it -- working 12 hour days is no issue. I am definitely not a person who immediately goes to alternative therapies. Actually, I was seeing a MD and physical therapist for over a year before trying these three things out of total frustration.BTW, I fully admit that #3 may be a placebo. #2 may be also. So what. They worked for me.
See the other slashdot stories for details, but there are no easy answers - recovering from RSI is a combination of:
- reducing your stress levels, and managing them with meditation/relaxation
- improving ergonomic setup (furniture, keyboard/screen setup, etc)
- improving posture and body use (try Trager, Alexander technique or Feldenkrais)
- massage/physio of various types (esp. adverse mechanical tension physiotherapy, trigger point massage)
- stretching (esp AMT stretches)
- changing work patterns (taking breaks and not typing during them!)
There's probably more that I've forgotten, but right at the bottom is vitamin supplements, glucosamine - I tried the former in spades and they made absolutely no difference.