Tingling in arms and hands, later pain in neck and lower back

by Moe
(Texas)

Hi,

I am a software engineer and for the past 8 weeks I have started to experience some really odd and scary things with my body.

It all started with my right hand scrolling finger ( long finger ), which started to hurt which could also be felt in the tennis elbow muscle. My little finger on the right hand caused me pain by the repetive use of the CTRL key. After a couple more days of working my right hand would form into a claw at times, and I had to squeez my hand to make it lock up, upon a cracking sound would be heard, I thought it might be arthritis because I have been going to the gym for the past 3 months doing heavy lifting.

Later, tingling in fingers in both arms arouse, and the lower arms muscles would feel like a tennis elbow and I used to try to massage them. Now I wear a wrist rap around my two hands and have started to squeeze a ball frequently but not really helping. Reading on the internet I have been trying to do exercises and might have damages my wrist more because now it is worse than it was 3 weeks ago. Wearing the wrist protection helps and I even sleep with it.

I have been taking vitamins ( Calcium, C, D, B12, Magnesium and multivitamins )lately and have been taking glucosamine and naproxen ( I am sure Id feel more pain without the naproxen )

At times I could feel my ankles hurt and also my feet would get similar tingling feeling but not like in my hands. My hands and arms gets really tired by sitting on the computer or at a desk pretty quickly.

After I while I could all of a sudden start to get pain in the neck and now I get it pretty much every day and it gets work while at the office. I also get lower back pain, but by doing gym exercises I think I can solve that part.

Summary: Tingling and pain in finger, hands, wrists and arms. Later started to have pain in shoulder, neck and lower back. Tingling on occasion in feets and on certain days in the ankle similar to the hand wrist pain. Usually after waking up I feel pretty ok, and through out the day it gets worse. I am pretty healthy guy other wise.

Hello Moe,
You have a tough profession: it combines long hours of sitting (lousy for the lower back) and computer work, especially bad for the neck and arms.

Suggestion number one: get a professional to assess your computer station. You probably need to make some changes.

Then, get up regularly and move about, swing your arms in a circle - do something different for a few minutes.

Get a small table to support the elbow of your mousearm, it takes the stretch off the shoulder and brachial plexus of nerves to the arm.

If movements of your neck cause neck pain, and particularly immediately tingling or pain in the arm, then see a chiro sooner rather than later. Those anti inflammatory drugs are doing you no good, treating the symptoms. Good health care addresseds the causes.

It's complex, and I can't give you a pat answer. But more movement regularly during the day can only help.

Dr B