Sore wrist, advice sought

pauldowker wrote:

Hi,

for a while now my right wrist has been painful, but only when out riding. day to day it is fine, apart from the day after a ride, like today.

I was knocked off a while back and hurt the wrist when i landed, i didn't think too much about it, just iced it when i get home and carried on. is there anything i can do to improve the strength and get rid of the pain? there doesn't seem to be any swelling or discolouration.

do i need to buy a wrist support?

any advice would be much appreciated.

Paul

worst case scenario: you may have fractured a scaphoid or another carpal bone. do you get any swelling to the painful area? if you do i'd advise an x-ray. it's also possible you could have partially torn or ruptured a ligmanet, in which case an mri would be useful.

looking a little more positively, you may just have sprained your wrist when you came off which has simply aggravated one or more of the ligaments and/or tendons. i would advise gentle stretching, massage and heat for this. when it feels a little stronger you could do some simple hand squeezing exercises with a soft tennis ball or something similar. be prepared though for this to take a while to completley settle.

overall i suspect the 'buzz' from the road coupled with weight on the handle bars is aggravating your condition. as long as your wrist is improving rather than getting worse or stagnating then i'd say it's likely to be the latter suggestion rather than the former. a support may be useful for long rides but don't rely on it for too long. try regularly changing hand position on the bars.

pauldowker wrote:

it doesn't feel broken as i have full movement in my wrist. the strange thing is the sore area is on the back of my hand/wrist, where you watch would go..

thanks for the advice though, i'll try putting ice and hot packs on and the exercises.

Paul

That's what I thought after a fall at Dalby but still painfull 2 weeks later so went for x-ray and had fractured it My pain was also on the back of the wrist.

I had pain in the wrists when riding for long periods (other possibility hospital thougt was stress fracture after riding Dalby everyday for a week) visit to LBS resulted in wider bars, new grips and a cheap adjustable stem so I could find out the best position for riding. Result = no pain even after another week at Dalby

a few years ago, i borke my right wtist. because the dr never let it heal properly, i sometimes have a sore wrist after a hard ride. mine hurts now form the iow.

If the wriist only hurts after riding then I wouldn't suspect it was broken however I am not midically trained (this only comes from experience of broken wrist and differnt soft tissue injuries). Firsly I wouldn't expect an MRI for a hurt wrirstas it would be cheaper to assume its broken and treat as such rather than do an MRI/Bone scan. I'd get it checked out and providing there's nothing major I would look into experimenting with different angles of your handlebars or differnt grips etc to try and reduce the stress on your wrist.
iboprophen should help but if it doesn't help much a doctor may give you some other NSAIDs to help with the pain and inflamation