Reduce wrist pain with B vitamins

Better Nutrition (1989-90), Feb, 1989 by Frank Murray

Reduce Wrist Pain With B Vitamins

A computer operator may not appear to have much in common with a postal service worker or truck loader. But because their occupations involve heavy use of the hands and wrists, all are at risk for carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). CTS is a condition that constricts nerves in the wrist, producing symptoms of tingling, nocturnal numbness and the inability to hold objects. Once associated only with pregnancy, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes, CTS has entered the general population with the development of more sophisticated hand-operated machinery.

When Jean Mager Stellman, Ph.D., associate professor at Columbia University's School of Public Health and director of the Women's Occupational Health Resource Center, New York, called CTS "the major cause of industrial disability," she targeted part of the problem: that the majority of industrial jobs depend on the repetitive manipulation of the hands and wrists. The other part of the problem lies in the physiology of the nervous system.

At certain points in the body, nerves run through confined spaces where they are apt to become severely pinched if surrounding tissues become swollen. A major nerve particularly subject to this kind of damage is one that carries signals between the brain and the hand. As it travels through the wrist, this nerve passes through a tunnel formed by the wrist bones, known as the carpals, and a tough membrane on the underside of the wrist that binds the bones together. The tunnel is rigid and if tissues within it swell, they press on the nerve.

Linda Morse, M.D., chief of the Division of Occupational Medicine at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in California, said that computer technology, which requires many repetitive motions, increasingly is to blame for new CTS cases. It is not unusual, she said, for a word processor to process 10,000 key punches in an hour or for a computerized billing machine operator to prepare between 500 and 1,000 bills in an hour. Truck loaders also are at risk, because their wrists are bent at a 90-degree angle as they lift heavy boxes all day.

Because physicians have reported so many CTS cases in recent years, occupational health experts have established task forces to determine the cause of the problem and what can be done about it.

Paolo Roffetta, M.D., Division of Epidemiology at the American Cancer Society in New York, conducted a study of worker-compensation claims from 17 states. Of those claims, 175,500 were hand and wrist injuries. Most frequently at risk were word processors, data-entry clerks, assembly-line workers, meatpackers and deboners, and post office employees.

Surgery is the usual treatment for CTS, and yet supplements of vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) have effectively treated this disorder, according to Patrick Quillin, Ph.D., R.D. in Healing Nutrients.

"In a more recent double-blind study, 100 mg of vitamin B6 daily cured CTS in 27 out of 28 patients," Dr. Quillin wrote. "Perhaps because of the role that B6 plays in producing neurochemical transmitters, supplements of B6 were able to almost totally eliminate the nerve and muscle problems that accompany excessive monosodium glutamate (MSG) intake."

In one 10-year study, John M. Ellis, M.D., of Mt. Pleasant, Texas, administered pyridoxine in various amounts to more than 200 pregnant woman. The dosage was determined by the degree of swelling in their hands and feet, he reported in Free of Pain.

Twenty-five of these women exhibited symptoms identical to carpal tunnel syndrome, and every one of these patients responded to treatment with vitamin B6 -- 50-300 mg daily, according to Dr. Ellis. Numbness and tingling sensations in the hands disappeared and the swelling subsided. Most significantly, tactile sensation was restored in the fingertips supplied by the median nerve. Later other pregnant patients who suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome gained relief from vitamin B6 therapy.

The power of vitamin B6 therapy for CTS, menopausal arthritis, deQuervain's disease (characterized by pain in the thumb), premenstrual edema, diabetes mellitus, hardening of the arteries and other conditions recently was reviewed in an address by Dr. Ellis before the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and the Texas Medical Association.

One of the exhibits discussed during both seminars included "before" and "after" photos of the hands of a 70-year-old woman diagnosed with deQuervain's Disease, menopausal arthritis, inflammation of a tendon in both hands and severe vitamin B6 deficiency. On a placebo for 84 days, she experienced some improvement in the left hand but swelling and pain remained in the right hand. After 76 days of taking 200 mg of vitamin B6 daily, the swelling subsided and the patient was able to wear rings that she had not been able to wear for eight years.

The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin B6 is between 1-1/2 and 2 mg daily for adults. Many people are apparently deficient in this vitamin, however, because the major dietary sources of B6 are brewer's yeast, wheat germ and blackstrap molasses, food items that are hard to eat the three-ounce portions necessary to meet the RDA. Other sources of B6 include bananas, beans and brown rice, but a three-ounce portion of any of these foods contains only about one-fifth the B6 found in a similar portion of brewer's yeast. To get enough B6, dietary supplements may be necessary. Your health food store carries B6 in a number of different supplement combinations.