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20 years experience advice on coping & healing Dupytren's injuries
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02/12/2013 15:38
FreshthePain 
02/12/2013 15:38
FreshthePain 
20 years experience advice on coping & healing Dupytren's injuries

The first thing to realize is that you probably do not have a disease but an injury.
A mechanical injury. The injury could have started as a small tear in the tendons your palm and been made
far worse by repetitive stress injuries via keyboarding, sports injuries, overuse of the injured hand etc.

Hand injuries are among the hardest injuries to heal because our hands are our interface & connection
to the world.It seems impossible to rest it.


Subtle injuries like this often go ignored until they become chronic enough that they can
no longer be ignored.

I have had an injured left palm for twenty years. I refuse to call it 'Dupuytren's ' because it was never a disease.
It was an injury , or series of injuries , brought about by whatever nutritional and behavioral anomolies I exposed
myself to over the years, including computer addiction, dehydrationj, malnutrition and host of other suspected
contributing factors including stress and insomnia.

My advice to people who are in the same boat that I was in a few years ago:

If you are having pain while sleeping, pay attention to your sleeping position.

Avoid putting any weight on the damaged hand.

Typing vigorously on the computer keyboard inflames the damaged palm.

Take small freezer packs to bed with you and freeze your palm as thoroughly as possible .

Extremely effective at reducing pain is to get those flexible blue thermal gel freezer bag/packs
and embed them in your palm and wrap them tightly to the damaged hand with a tensor bandage. It will be cold at first but as the nerves cool and the ice bag warms you feel nothing but immense pain relief.

The wrapping also serves to remind you not to put weight on your damaged hand

(for example: avoid actions such as tucking the damaged hand under your pillow or crawling about the bed on your damaged palm)

The wrapping also prevents you from unconsciously clenching your damaged palm while asleep.

Before bed take one capsule of Circumin with one capsule of Quercetin mixed and dissolved in a tablespoon of olive oil.

If you can get it, chewing a tablespoon of marijuana prior to bed will bring you to deep sleep a couple of hours after falling asleep.

Before applying the ice pack, massage your palm with an electric vibrating massager.

Do some hand massage to stretch the palm from the nodules out, applying pressure to hold the damaged tissue in place while stretching the undamaged tissue of the palm to the edges of your palm.

The idea is to stretch the palm without tearing or inflaming the nodules. This makes the entire palm more elastic
and reduces the structural/muscular pressure on the damaged portion of your palm.

After massage, apply DMSO gel mixed with Vitarub and Flexcin and collagen cream.

Next, wrap the hand in a frozen blue gel bag with a tensor bandage
or just freeze your palm with a square blue plastic ice pack.

Avoid mouth breathing at night as this creates bodily inflammation and makes any pain from injuries much worse.

Tape your mouth closed with duct tape . Seriously, it actually works , to slow your breathing enough and oxygenate the brain by forcing nose breathing to the point that you can fall asleep.

Essentials to sleeping with pain:

No caffeine after noon .

Have a warm bath while preparing to sleep.

Drink a herbal sleep formula tea as you take your pain medication, your circumin etc.,

Take an anti -itching pill (antihistamines if you are taking codeine , which causes skin itching that prevents sleep. Pain killers often cause insomnia by creating extremely disturbing itching)

While drinking your sleep tea, take all your vitamins and meds.

Thoroughly clean your mouth (brush your tongue and teeth with fluoride free toothpaste, floss with hand held disposable dental flossers, antiseptic MW)

Tape the mouth tightly closed with high quality duct tape thirty minutes prior to even trying to fall asleep;
After your mouth is taped, sit on the floor or couch while doing some gentle leg stretches , the hand massage , the pain cream application, etc., while listening to music or soothing talk show (oneradionetwork.com health talk radio show , I suggest)

While stretching be extremely careful not to place too much weight on your damaged palm and be careful not to hyper-extend your palm. Then do the freezing or wrapping of the damaged palm while still stretching your legs out on the floor with the duct tape forcing you to breath only through your nose. Try doing all of this as a ritual prior to even lying down. You will feel drowsy and pain free before even hitting the sack and fall asleep immediately. The duct tape often falls off during the night , but it serves its purpose to train nose breathing and help you fall asleep. The extra sleep and rest will enable your body to heal itself. Minimize your use of the damaged hand and supplement your diet with collagen and MSM complex and kelp.
To remind you not to injure the hand , wear a wrist brace which can be bought at any drug store

Edited 02/12/13 18:03

02/12/2013 16:28
zinkadoodle 
02/12/2013 16:28
zinkadoodle 
Re: 20 years experience advice on coping & healing Dupytren's injuries

And your dupuytrens disease, I mean injuries are gone? Really??!!

(going back into my skeptical lurk mode......)

02/12/2013 16:41
stephenjeffrey 
02/12/2013 16:41
stephenjeffrey 

Re: 20 years experience advice on coping & healing Dupytren's injuries

Tape the mouth tightly closed with high quality duct tape !!!!!!!!!!!!

02/12/2013 17:45
FreshthePain 
02/12/2013 17:45
FreshthePain 
Re: 20 years experience advice on coping & healing Dupytren's injuries

zinkadoodle:
And your dupuytrens disease, I mean injuries are gone? Really??!!

(going back into my skeptical lurk mode......)

My pain is vastly reduced after developing and following these
coping strategies, yes.

Fortunately I never liked golf much, because I doubt that I will ever
heal so thoroughly as to use the hand in such things as wacking
a golf ball or wacking a hockey puck around without serious risk of
injury/reinjury. Same goes for diving into those adventurous yoga positions like
downward dog with all your body weight placed on your injured palm.
Not advisable. Use a backpack to carry groceries around, instead of hooking heavy
heavy plastic grocery bags to your fingers and straining your injured palm
to the point that it hurts. I've realized that I'll never be able to be reckless and carefree
without paying for it directly and immediately with chronic pain.

What I have noticed is that I CAN painlessly type on the keyboard now,
when a few years ago my left hand would have been radiating pain throughout
my entire left side. A big part of it , for me, is typing gently and avoiding use of the center finger.
Treat it as an injury , which it is, not a 'disease'.

DMSO gel is an indispensible aid in healing tissue injuries.
But only if you actually give your hand a chance to heal

02/12/2013 18:11
FreshthePain 
02/12/2013 18:11
FreshthePain 
Re: 20 years experience advice on coping & healing Dupytren's injuries

stephenjeffrey:
Tape the mouth tightly closed with high quality duct tape !!!!!!!!!!!!

It sounds funny but duct tape is the only type of tape which is sticky enough
to stay on and keep ones mouth closed for long enough to actually fall asleep.
There's too much moisture and warmth and movement involved for any other
type of tape. Try it a few times and I guarantee that you will awaken in the morning feeling
better rested, especially on those occasions when you awaken with the tape still stuck
firmly in place. THis means that you have been deeply breathing through your
nose for several hours , as nature intended. This also helps with snoring and sleep apnea issues.

THe reason I mention it here is because proper, regular, deep, lengthy , pain free
sleep is absolutely essential to healing a chronic injury.
If you can find a simpler, cheaper, and more effective way to nose breath while sleeping
and control snoring etc. , post it.

Its not without its pitfalls. Such as forgetting to clean one's mouth before taping and
having to remove the tape to brush your teeth or take a forgotten pill or anwser an
unexpected phone call. Yes, it's inconvenient. But so is having your entire hormonal cycles and sleep
cycles and even bowel cycles wacked out by chronic pain and pain killers. Inconvenient.

It all comes down to your level of determination and commitment to healing yourself.
If your nose is plugged with congestion, obviously you cannot tape your mouth closed.
In that case you will have to get to the root of why your nose is always congested,
and solve that problem too. Failing that, clean your sinuses and nose out thoroughly and take
a simple over the counter remedy to dry up your nose. THen, duct tape time.

Holistic healing means that that one often has to solve and heal a whole host of what
may appear to be minor issues and ailments. It should be spelled Wholistic healing
because most healing depends upon solving ALL the health problems of the WHOLE
person which created the chronic issue in the first place.

Edited 02/13/13 00:44

02/22/2013 20:09
RetiredTeacher 
02/22/2013 20:09
RetiredTeacher 
Re: 20 years experience advice on coping & healing Dupytren's injuries

Dear Fresh the Pain,
I am so sorry that you have had this DD for 20 years. I have only dealt with it for 2 years and was very frustrated by the orthopedic doctor's advice to wait until I could no longer put my hand flat on the table. Luckily we have this forum which is very informative with all kinds of different treatments. I think we just have to find the treatment that works for us, since each of us reacts differently to each treatment.

02/24/2013 16:32
FreshthePain 
02/24/2013 16:32
FreshthePain 
Re: 20 years experience advice on coping & healing Dupytren's injuries

RetiredTeacher:
Dear Fresh the Pain,
I am so sorry that you have had this DD for 20 years. I have only dealt with it for 2 years and was very frustrated by the orthopedic doctor's advice to wait until I could no longer put my hand flat on the table. Luckily we have this forum which is very informative with all kinds of different treatments. I think we just have to find the treatment that works for us, since each of us reacts differently to each treatment.


It can be extremely frustrating to have to use a medical system which spends five to ten minutes to deal with a condition that is potentially ruinous to one's entire way of life. The chronic pain is probably the main reason which brings most people to mention a lump in their palm to their doctor. I think many doctors poo poo hand pain because it is so rare and hard to imagine , for someone not suffering it. The hands are incredibly sensitive, resilient and strong, so my guess is that most doctors simply dismiss the idea that there could be chronic pain in the hands. Hands tend to heal incredibly fast, like feet, because they are so vital to our survival as an organism.

Many doctors will try to give you antidepressants because they simply do not believe that your hand lump is a problem. Given the fact that a lot of people are near the end of their rope , on their last legs etc. by the time they become desperate enough to seek medical help for their pain, a lot of doctors will evaluate your appearance as being close to that of some sort of dysfunctional lowlife. As soon as you mention insomnia being caused by the pain, they do the old double-think and diagnose you as some sort of chemically imbalanced , depressed, misinformed hypochondriac insomniac who is so sleepless that you are hallucinating and imagining pain when your real problem is your own financial incompetence, mental illness, intellectual laziness and personal ugliness etc.

My advice is to stay away from the surgeons and to make a CONCERTED effort to heal the injured tissue. If that means resting the hand and having to avoid many many activities as a result, TOO BAD. You have to do it. In many , probably most, cases., it is either rest your damaged hand, or keep re-injuring it and irritating it on a daily basis, and in that case your hand will probably never heal.

In my opinion, the only path to healing the injuries is through rest, massage, DMSO, and therapeutic nutrition.
That means an anti-inflammatory diet. Cut out wheat and sugar wherever possible.

By rest I mean not just avoiding use and injury of the injured hand , but also lengthy, deep, rejuvenating sleep and avoidance of mental stress wherever possible. Eliminate allergens and toxins. The anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle will enable you to rest properly by keeping your pulse rate and bodily temperature and blood pressure down .

The longer one can go without re-injury to the hand , under optimal conditions of rest and nutrition, the greater your chances of healing it.

02/24/2013 17:37
callie 
02/24/2013 17:37
callie 
Re: 20 years experience advice on coping & healing Dupytren's injuries

Are you talking about Dupuytren's, or what? Dupuytren's very seldom if ever causes the pain you describe. You seem to be referring to some other disease. Dupuytren's can cause discomfort in some cases, but certainly what you describe is not normal for Dupuytren's.

03/14/2013 00:38
stephenp 
03/14/2013 00:38
stephenp 
Re: 20 years experience advice on coping & healing Dupytren's injuries

Dupuytrens is a disease with a genetic link and is highly variable from person to person. I do not believe it is an "injury" and this is misleading. There are probably some triggers and behaviours that may exacerbate this disease in some cases. Likewise with treatments. My father had DD as have my 2 brothers.With all of us it has been active and inactive at various times for no particular reason that we can identify. For many people there are factors outside their control. In reading this forum, many people try many things but this insidious disease just progresses in some and stops in others.

My story is common, nodules developing in one hand about 10 years ago. The disease was then inactive until about 2 years ago when it picked up pace to the the extent I sought treatment (RT). This has been effective. About 4 weeks ago I noticed a nodule on the right hand. I think I will adopt a wait and see before a second round of RT.

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antihistamines   Dupuytren   thoroughly   healing   Dupytren   injuries   antidepressants   treatment   hallucinating   experience   anti-inflammatory   disease   damaged   because   unconsciously   dysfunctional   stephenjeffrey   oneradionetwork   hypochondriac   RetiredTeacher