A recent study from Harvard Medical School says that your genetics may play a bigger role in carpal tunnel than repetitive motion or too much keyboard time.
So what is carpal tunnel syndrome? Your arm has a nerve called the median nerve that runs down the arm and into the hand, controlling some of the sensations to thumb and your first three fingers. At the wrist, the median nerve passes through a space called the carpal tunnel. If the nerve becomes compressed or squeezed in the carpal tunnel, you can experience tingling (like pins-and-needles when a limb falls asleep), pain, weakness, or numbness in the hand, wrist, and forearm.
The general perception is that carpal tunnel syndrome is related to hand use. But that may not be the case.
The lead surgeon on the study believes that the scientific evidence that carpal tunnel syndrome is caused by overuse is weak. Genetic factors are the most important risk factor — things like shape of the hands and wrists. In more than a hundred different studies on carpal tunnel syndrome, the researchers found that genetic evidence was far more important than occupational risk factors. In other words, using your hands a lot may not be the real cause of carpal tunnel syndrome.
The Harvard Medical School research team felt strongly enough about the results to say that a person diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome is like an innocent bystander — nothing they did (like computer overuse, or repetitive motion) caused the discomfort.
That isn’t to say that using your hands a lot can’t cause you some sort of discomfort. Repetitive strain injury (RSI) causes pain, weakness, numbness, and tingling without direct evidence of injury. The carpal tunnel — where the median nerve passes from the arm into the hand — is not involved in this particular pain in the wrist. But RSI can be remedied or prevented by using a workstation that is appropriately (ergonomically) set up.