TRIA Orthopaedic Center Your Cycling Blog

Sometimes it’s inevitable: on a longer ride, or on colder days, our hands can begin to feel tingly or numb. In the case of weather, it might be improperly covered digits, but when the numbness occurs on a more frequent basis, it could be something more. Whether it be bike equipment or your cycling gloves, numbness shouldn’t occur in any way, shape or form when you’re riding your bike.

In this edition of “Ask the TRIA Orthopaedic Surgeon,” we got our answer from Deb Bohn, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon specializing in elbow, hand & wrist, pediatric upper extremity, and shoulder fractures. Here’s what she had to say about hand numbness during cycling:

Prolonged gripping, or pressure on the palms, can cause numbness in the fingers. This is due to compression of the median nerve, whose job is to give feeling to the thumb, index, long and half of the ring fingers.  As long as the numbness goes away within a few minutes of letting go of the handlebars, these symptoms are merely an annoyance rather than worrisome.

Some strategies for coping with these symptoms include altering the position of your hands on the handlebars, switching the hand that squeezes the brake, letting your arm hang at your side for a few seconds, using a more relaxed grip on the handlebars, keeping your wrists straight rather than bent way back, or wearing gloves that have pads on the outsides of the palm to keep pressure off the center of the palms.

For more information about Dr. Bohn, as well as the other doctors at TRIA, go to their website and look around: http://tria.com/

Uncategorized   Tags: Dr. Deb Bohn, Hand Numbness, Numb Hands, TRIA Orthopaedic,   Comments Off