Condition
Carpal Tunnel
Numbness, tingling, or weakness in your hand and fingers.
If this sounds like you…
It started at night. Now it interrupts typing, driving, and holding a coffee cup. You're being told surgery is next.
Hands that wake you up
The quiet things you've started avoiding because your hands won't cooperate.
- Your hand wakes you up — and you shake it out at 3 a.m. hoping for relief
- You drop coffee cups, pens, keys — small things that didn't used to be hard
- Driving for more than 20 minutes leaves your fingers numb on the wheel
- Typing is now interrupted by stretches, splints, and pauses you didn't need before
- You worry about your job — whether you can keep doing the work that pays you
- Buttoning a shirt or holding a phone has become an exercise in patience
- The night splint helps a little but you hate sleeping in it
- You're being scheduled for surgery and your gut says 'wait — there has to be more'
Your hands are how you work, how you parent, how you live. Losing function in them is uniquely terrifying because it's so visible — to you, to your boss, to your family. You don't want to be cut on if you don't have to be. You want someone to actually trace the nerve from your neck to your fingertips and tell you exactly where the problem is — not just route you to the operating room.
You're not making it up. You're not being dramatic.
If any of the above made you nod, exhale, or feel a little seen — that's the point. Dr. Stuckey's exam starts from the assumption that what you're feeling is real, measurable, and worth taking seriously.
What your family notices
The people who love you have been watching this longer than you realize.
You think you've been hiding it. You haven't — not really. Here's what the people closest to you have quietly noticed, even if they've never said a word:
- You shake your hand out at the dinner table, in the car, in bed
- You drop things more often — and laugh it off
- You sleep in a wrist splint and hate it
- You ask someone else to open jars, button shirts, hold the baby for a minute
- You're worried about work in a way you haven't said out loud yet
If your spouse, your kids, or your friends have started doing things for you — opening the jar, taking the stairs first, slowing down on the walk — they've been protecting you. Getting better gives them their person back, too.
Causes & traditional approaches
Why carpal tunnel happens — and why the usual fixes fall short.
Common underlying causes
- Median nerve compression at the wrist from repetitive flexion and gripping
- Nerve irritation higher up — at the neck, shoulder, or forearm — adding to wrist symptoms
- Inflammation and swelling inside the carpal tunnel itself
- Postural patterns (forward head, rounded shoulders) that load the nerve along its full path
- Conditions like thyroid disease, diabetes, or pregnancy that increase nerve sensitivity
Traditional approaches & their limits
Night splints
Limit: Reduce nighttime symptoms but don't take pressure off the nerve during the day or address upstream contributions.
Cortisone injections at the wrist
Limit: Short-lived relief that ignores any neck, shoulder, or forearm component of the compression.
Carpal tunnel release surgery
Limit: Helps when the compression is truly only at the wrist — but symptoms often persist or return when the upstream irritation was the real driver.
Wrist-only stretches and ergonomic tweaks
Limit: Helpful adjuncts, but rarely enough on their own when the nerve is being irritated along its full path from neck to fingertip.
The Platinum Health Approach
How Dr. Stuckey treats carpal tunnel differently.
Dr. Stuckey evaluates the nerve from neck to fingertip, then uses a combination of soft-tissue release, joint mobilization, nerve-glide therapy, and high-frequency vibration therapy to take pressure off the nerve along its entire path.
Dr. Troy Stuckey, D.C.
Founder, Platinum Health Solutions
In their own words
What a patient with carpal tunnel had to say.
Surgery was on the calendar. Dr. Stuckey traced the nerve from my neck down — turned out my wrist wasn't the whole story. I'm typing all day and sleeping through the night without the splint.
Common questions
Ready to find out if we can help?
Schedule your $49 new patient special. Includes consultation, exam, and a written treatment plan.