Important muscles involved in hand, wrist & arm pain – Part 1

There are many intricate muscles and soft tissue structures in the hand, wrist and arm which can cause various types of pain, numbness sensations, weakness, pins and needles or electric shock type of sensations when they become constricted, tight or dehydrated through physical over use or misuse, bad posture, accidents, old injuries (such as high velocity neck impact or whiplash) and deep scar tissue, and/or combined with unremitting emotional stress.

2 muscles which I’d like to draw the reader’s particular special attention to in this article are the scalenes and pectroalis minor muscles.  These are 2 very important and relevant muscles which massage therapists who have been through advanced trainings in say for example clinical massage techniques will know how to treat efficiently and very specifically.  Both of these muscles are very much neglected in most general relaxation massage work.  The scalenes muscles are located in the base of the lower neck and attach to the first and second ribs, whilst the pectoralis minor muscles covers the 2nd, 3rd and 4th rib in the region of the front upper chest.  Both muscles although located respectively in the neck and upper shoulder region are often highly relevant in hand, wrist and arm pain pathologies, one of the main reasons behind this is that the brachial nerve plexus and its subsequent other  sub branching nerves serving the arm passes directly underneath both of these muscles so any tightness in either of these muscles is going to have a direct physical effect on creating nerve related aggravation in these regions.

[Trigger Point Pain Referral Pattern for Scalenes Muscle Group]

[Trigger Point Pain Referral Pattern for Pectoralis Minor Muscle]

Signs of nerve related impingement or over simulation can include pins and needles, intermittent shooting pains over a certain region (such as down the arm), electric shock type sensations, or areas of numbness.  Nerve impingement caused by the scalenes or pectoralis minor muscles can also cause the muscles and proprioception to misfire so causing symptoms of weakness or spasm in the arm, hand or wrist.  Symptoms of carpel tunnel or other repetitive strain injury type side effects can also be triggered or caused by soft tissue tension in these apparently unrelated areas further up and away from the hand, wrist and lower arm (but which you now know after having read this article and viewing the related videos are very much related).

Tightness in the scalenes muscles can cause tingling all the way down to the thumb and first fingers of the hand, whilst pectoralis minor tension cause refer tingling all the way down to the ring finger and little finger.  Constriction of the blood supply serving the arm from a tight pectoralis minor muscle can also cause feelings of coldness or lack of circulation to the fingers.

Habitual shallow breathing, particularly whereby the type of breathing only involves the use of the upper chest (rather than full deep belly breaths) is another potential cause of chronic tightness in the scalenes muscles.  Stress management through gradual build up practice of proper relaxing deep breathing is the perfect antidote.  Notice when you’re stressed or shallow breathing, be gentle and kind to yourself, congratulate yourself for noticing and just start by receiving 3 deep breaths in and out and build up that number over time, the idea is that over time it builds up to more of an unconscious habit rather than a conscious effort.

As with all these topic, there’s always so much that could be written or linked to, this is just what I could cobble together off the top of my head and without turning this into a fully blown dissertation as well as given the fact that I would like to go to bed in a moment (!!), but if you want to know more or have any suggestions I would be glad to receive your feedback as always and compile a part 2 or further subsequent parts as a follow on to this particular article as the demand unfolds.

Be well! 🙂

Email: info@isca-therapies.co.uk

Visit the ISCA Therapies website: www.isca-therapies.co.uk

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 3 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 21 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 23 posts. There were 34 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was December 9th with 145 views. The most popular post that day was Freeing up the shoulder and opening up the rib cage!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were networkedblogs.com, facebook.com, isca-therapies.co.uk, twitter.com, and righthealth.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for shoulder muscles, shoulder girdle muscles, erector spinae, muscles of the shoulder, and shoulder muscle.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Freeing up the shoulder and opening up the rib cage! May 2010

2

Important Muscles Involved in Lower Back Pain – Part 1 : Quadratus Lumborum June 2010
6 comments

3

What’s the difference between an osteopath, chiropractor, physiotherapist and what you do? April 2010
6 comments

4

Important Muscles Involved in Lower Back Pain – Part 2 : Psoas June 2010
2 comments

5

Resolving back pain through spinal manipulation July 2010
3 comments