Taking Care of your Wrists (And other Artist Muscles)

DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a medical professional, and this should not be considered professional medical advice in any capacity. First and foremost, you should always seek out professional medical help and diagnosis instead of depending on randos on the internet! If you are like me and do not have insurance, but are living in an area with something like a CVS. Consider going into your local CVS to ask for advice on dealing with RSIs.

Most of the links to products are from amazon, I do not support amazon in any way. However, from experience living in the middle of nowhere rurally, I know amazon is genuinely the most accessible place for those who can't eaily go to a store and so I have decided to make product links from amazon for the sake of this accessibility.

As a bit of background, I am a freelance digital artist and writer, as well as an avid gamer. In October of 2023, I began to have pain in my dominant wrist. Then a few days later, the same happened in my nondominant wrist because I was overcompensating on it. As of writing this it is early December 2024, and my wrists are not the same as they once were. Though they showed incredible improvement from the pain of that October and throughout the rest of 2024, they are still sore and I can't draw, type, cook, or play games as much as I used to.

I was diagnosed with chronic tendonitis in my knees at 12 or 13, and I never considered it could be a problem in my wrists, elbows, and my thumb reflexor as well. I was also diagnosed with Carpal tunnel in my late teens because I didn't take breaks when I needed to. Needless to say though, I have tried just about everything to help with strengthening and pain management in many injuries that affect the muscles, especially those that affect artists.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where not everyone has access to healthcare or even free medical resources like CVS. I am very poor and disabled without benefits, so I have had to research and learn about my own injuries myself in order to treat them. This is a complete list of everything that I have done or currently do to help with my injuries. I am by no means a medical expert, but I at least have some insight and experience that can inspire you to figure out what works best for you!

Everything I have suggested that is free will be highlighted so it is clearly marked and easy to see. I know it's not always possible for someone to go out and buy a bunch of things, so I wanted to find as many free suggestions as I could too.

1. Identifying the Injury

Muscle vs Nerve vs Bone pains

It's hard to start a treatment plan for something when you don't know exactly what it is that hurts. Over the course of this year, I'd learned a lot about identifying not only where pain is, but also what type of pain I’m feeling.

Muscle pain is felt in the meat of your body. It can be a constant dull soreness or a sharp stinging pain during movement or certain resting positions. It is easiest for me to tell when it's muscle pain because if I can massage or feel the area of the injury, I feel some sort of relief in those meaty areas. When my wrist was in the beginning stages of its injury, the tendon felt very tight to the touch. I described my injured thumb reflexor as "feeling as if there was a guitar string under my skin". When massaging them, it truly felt like 'strumming' as the muscle had a tautness to it that was definitely unnatural and somewhat painful. It can also cause instability in the muscle, which not only makes it harder to lift or hold things but also can cause the tendons to pop with movement.

Nerve pain is personally the easiest to identify to me. It often feels like pins and needles, a tingling or buzzing in the injured part of the body. It can also cause an uncomfortable numbness in things like your fingers and toes.

It is important to note that if an injury is severe enough in the muscle, it can ALSO cause nerve pains. If this is the case for your injury it is best to give it a lot of rest before continuing with the later half of this guide.

Bone pain is often very deep and a constant ache. Personally the bone pain I experience can’t be soothed with massages which is often how I can tell the difference between my muscles and bones being injured. Pain in my bones also causes swelling unlike my muscle pains which just tend to ache.

Learning to Google Better

Once you figure out what kind of pain it might be, the next step is to find out exactly where it hurts. What kind of injury causes this pain?

If you google something vague like “Why does my wrist hurt when I draw?” It’ll likely come up with carpal tunnel. Which may be true, or may not be. At the beginning stages of my wrist injury I assumed it was carpal tunnel since I had it before in the past, but carpal tunnel never caused my thumbs to feel tight, and it never hurt so far into my pinky finger. So I decided to look up a diagram of the muscles in the wrist and found exactly what hurt. When I googled “what causes pain in (specified muscle) ?” the answers and treatment became much more specific!

Let me give a specific example. Below is an image illustrating where my wrist pain occurred.

Then I looked up a diagram of muscles in the hand and wrist, looking for the exact place that it hurt like so. I try to find a chart as detailed and anatomically accurate as possible.

Once I was semi-confident that the muscle in question was flexor carpi ulnaris, I looked up “ Pain in flexor carpi ulnaris “ instead of the vague ‘in the wrist’, which gave me a lot more specific results like so:

(For simplicity's sake, this is one google result. Everything further down are PDFs and more things pointing towards tendonitis as well! Don’t make your judgement based on one top google result.)

This isn’t just something to do with pain in the arm either, I have also done the same thing for muscle spasms and pain in the muscles of my neck. Identifying the specific muscle or muscle groups the problem occurs in helps prevent mis-self diagnosing yourself with the first thing google pops up with.

Preparing for the Healing Journey

The next thing that I think is important, is to look up how long your injury may take to heal. I dealt with the brunt of my tendonitis for over a year, I am still somewhat recovering. Many times I had anxiety attacks over ‘being like this forever’ because I assumed Tendonitis did not take that long to heal. It turns out tendonitis in the wrist can take 6 to 12 months to heal! Add to the fact I am a generally sickly person who takes awhile to recover from physical pain and it seemed to be a normal time for recovery in the end.

This way you are setting a realistic expectation for yourself, as well as being informed on the natural time it takes to heal from something like this. Now if your recovery takes an extra long time, you can consider reaching out for more urgent help if something is more seriously wrong.

2. Skills the Help the Injury

Stretches

I cannot stress enough that stretches should be done by everyone, not just those who are already injured. If you are an artist, a writer, or a gamer, you should be doing stretches before you engage in your activity! It’s a good habit to pick up.

You should stretch before, inbetween, and after long periods of drawing, typing, gaming, etc. Below are the exact stretches I do, I always do them for both arms and I count to 12 for each stretch.

I like to start with cross-body arm stretches. They are done like so:

After limbering up my arms like this, I move on to the wrist flexor stretch. It stretches all of the arm muscles from the shoulder, to the elbow down to the fingers. It is recommended for people with Tendonitis of the wrists, elbows, and even people with carpal tunnel. Basically if you decide to do any stretching, this should always be one to consider!

I do 12 seconds with my hand up, and 12 seconds with my hand down.

Then after I’ve stretched all of that out, I move onto the thumb extensor stretch. I specifically found this helpful for when the muscle in my thumb was tight and achy.

I pull back only until I start to feel that muscle stretch, but I emphasize the importance of not hyperextending your joints and pulling them back too far! It can have the opposite effect of a good stretch.

Finally I finish my daily stretches with something called prayer hands. They look like this:

I also do the prayer pose while pointing my fingers outwards, and then finally pointing them down towards the ground. After that, I give my hands a good shake out and start with my task!

At any point my hands are sore or uncomfortable throughout the day, I will stop and either do all of these stretches, or whichever I know stretches that particular soreness really well.

Massages

Another important part of taking care of your muscles, especially while they’re injured are massages. You can use your fingers to do this easily, though due to my injury being in both of my wrists at once I had to find a way to massage one without straining the other.

I decided to use a rubber tennis ball. You don’t have to specifically buy a tennis ball, just something that can roll back and forth and holds its shape. Meaning that it can’t be a squishy stress ball. This is the ball I decided to use below.

In order to use a ball or rollable object to stretch, first place it on the table. Rest your injured areas on top of it and roll it back and forth. Try to run the object or ball with the flow of your muscles, meaning up and down the arm. The next way to massage the injured muscles in your arm is called strumming, this is where you massage your muscles against the way they naturally flow. In this instance, I did it across my arm instead of down it. Think of it like strumming a guitar, the strings move vertically, but you create sound by strumming them horizontally. You can do this with the ball/rollable object, or your hands!

In my personal experience, strumming can be uncomfortable and even slightly squicky to feel your muscles move around while you do it. However, it is very helpful both for rubbing out knots, and to provide blood flow to the areas affected by your injury. This is beneficial because good blood circulation to these injuries helps promote your body to heal it better!

Excercises

Another way to effectively use the ball as a tool for your wrist or arm injury, is to use it to exercise your gripping muscles. Hold the ball in your hand, fingers wrapped around it. Give the ball a good squeeze, enough to exert effort but not all of your strength. I personally hold this for 15 seconds before releasing, and do it two or so times with each hand!

The reason I do this is because tendonitis specifically hurts the strength of your hands including gripping and lifting things. For me, lifting even my stainless steel water cup can feel painful or uncomfortable the way the average person would pick it up, I normally have to use two hands or brace the weight on my own body. So exercises like this in addition to stretches can help restore even a fraction of the grip strength lost from my injury!

Another way you can improve the strength of your muscles is by lifting a small amount of weight. When I say small amounts, I am saying that 1 to 2 pounds is ideal here. You are essentially doing mini curls with just your wrist, I did 10 reps on each wrist once a day. If you hear your wrist constantly popping throughout this exercise, the muscle may be unstable from your injury. In which case, you should skip this until it has healed a bit more. Focus on the previous squeezing exercise instead!

Here is a link to some 1lb dumbells - $3.00

Rest is something you should always be doing, especially if you are in constant discomfort or pain, but further along in recovery be sure not to deny your injury any movement at all. If an injury like tendonitis in the wrist doesn’t have any movement or use, it can actually become just as sore as if it were being overused.

So make sure to try and do something as long as the pain is not significant! This does NOT mean I am saying to draw a whole finished picture despite pain. This means that it needs some sort of light movement like stirring, or pouring, a little bit of typing, or stretching etc. every once and awhile to keep the muscles practicing motion!

If you try to do something with your injury and you feel significant pain, do NOT push through. It could be too soon for this step, so it’s best to work on pain management skills before trying this out.

3. Pain Management

Heat & Cold

An important part of healing any strain injury is to alternate hot and cold on the injured area. I personally recommend 30 minutes with a cold source, 30 minutes with a heat source, and 30 minutes to rest without either before repeating the cycle again. Alternating like this is important, since both hot and cold have their benefits! Cold can help reduce inflammation and numb pain. Heat helps promote blood flow to the area as well as relieves aching especially to things like joint pain and stiffness, which can sometimes be exacerbated by the cold.

I recommend using a heating pad if it’s possible to invest in one! You can keep it on for longer periods of time without it going cold, and you can control the temperature you set it at. We use both of these electric heating pads and they have been literally life changing.

If you can’t invest in buying an electric heating pad, there are also ways to make your own microwaveable rice sock!

How to Make a Heating Sock

If you don’t have a microwave safe sock, you can heat the rice separately in a microwave safe container and add it into a sock before tying it off!

You can also purchase microwaveable heating pads similar to this. We use this two-pack here!

Another alternative to a heating sock is to use a washcloth. Washcloths aren’t always made of nonflammable materials, so please check the material and proceed with caution.

For applying cold to the injury, you can always use standard ice packs. These are also able to be purchased, I personally like them in this sort of style.

Rester’s Choice Soft flexible Ice pack - $19.97

If you can’t purchase an ice pack, but don’t already have your own, that's okay! Using a bag of frozen veggies works just as well. I almost exclusively used those as ice packs in my childhood, just make sure to put them back in the freezer before they thaw out so they don’t go bad!

There is also an easy way to make an ice pack if you don’t have frozen vegetables either, just put some ice cubes in a ziplock baggie and it works the same way. If an icepack is soothing the injury, but the cold hurts your skin, wrap it in a paper towel or some fabric that isn’t too thick! That way the cold can still seep through, but not so much that it feels painful.

Braces and Compression Gear

Most of the improvement I saw in my wrist injury was due to having braces and compression gear during the worst of it all. Even during lingering severe pain, putting on my wrist braces offered a lot of relief that could help me get more comfortable. Identifying what types of gear you would benefit from most is important!

If you feel like you need to limit the mobility of your injury, look into getting a stabilizer or immobilizing brace. These are similar to splints, and will have metal skeletons in them to keep you from moving your joints certain ways. I wore two wrist stabilizers during the day when typing, as it offered extra support under my wrists and kept them in a neutral position! I also wore them while sleeping, since I know I tend to sleep with my arms underneath my body which caused them to be sore when I woke up.

Personally, I have this one here! I have one for each arm, but it is possible to just flip one around to use it on the other arm if needed, it is just slightly less comfortable.

ZOFORE SPORT Stabilizer for Wrist - $14.97

If you want less restrictive support, or you are looking for pain relief using compression, then looking for a compression brace or gloves is a good option! In fact, I am writing this very guide with a compression brace on right now! It relieves soreness from my wrists really well, and the first compression brace on this list is what I consider to be the most helpful thing on this entire guide. I would not be as recovered and comfortable if I didn’t have this!

Another helpful type of compression gear are compression gloves and sleeves. They focus less on the structural support like a brace, and more just the compression aspect. So if you can’t handle the sensory feeling of decreased mobility, these might be the best compromise!

Duerer Compression gloves- $9.99

Well wrapped ACE Bandages can also be used on most injuries from the shoulder to the wrist. Make sure they are tight enough to provide some pressure, but that the bandage isn’t cutting off circulation. If you’re worried about how tight you’ve wrapped it, check your arms or hands! If they are turning pink or purple, or swelling, remove the bandage immediately!

Over the Counter Medicine

DISCLAIMER: Medication is different for everyone. This is only what I have taken personally, and how it affected me during my injuries. Please use discretion when taking medication advice, and ONLY take the medication safely as directed on the back of the bottle!

All of the medicine recommended in this section is over the counter meaning you can buy it at any pharmacy with no prescription (at least in the US, where I live). Before taking medication, you can look up the warnings and directions here on CVS’s website! https://www.cvs.com/druginfo/

The medication I took the most throughout all of this is ibuprofen, especially if it was the only medication I could afford to take at the time. I caution that taking it a lot is bad for your stomach, and you Must take it after eating since ibuprofen can tear your stomach lining if taken a lot without having something in your stomach already! We were taking three 200mg tablets three or four times a day, usually 4 to 5 hours apart.

I have recently found, in the past month or so, that taking Ibuprofen alongside Tylenol has been the most effective pain treatment and the safest. Since during the whole of 2024 with my wrist injury, I was concerned about taking so much Ibuprofen on its own. Personally we take one 500mg tablet of tylenol, and two 200mg tablets of ibuprofen once or twice a day 6 hours apart.

It has not only cut the amount of medication I take, but it lasts longer and works much better! I was recommended this by a friend who had a broken foot, who said that this combination of pain meds can be as effective as narcotics without the dangerous side effects. This study linked here, while talking about a specific medication which combines ibuprofen and acetaminophen into one tablet, also goes over the effectiveness of the combination of ibuprofen and acetaminophen in general. It is prescribed to those recovering from surgeries as a non-opioid alternative pain reliever! https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2791549/

In my experience, taking gel capsules of these meds can be a bit harder to swallow but they work faster than regular tablets. So if you are looking for quicker pain relief and don’t mind the size of the gel capsules, those might be something to look for!

Another medication I have experience with using is a topical gel called Diclofenac. It used to be prescription only, but in the last year or so has become over the counter in the US! This gel has been really effective for me, though it does state on the instructions that it takes a few days of consistent application for the effects to be noticeable on the injured area.

Please read the disclaimers and information very carefully if you decide to try out diclofenac! It has specific application instructions because it can potentially raise blood pressure in its users.If you have heart problems or high blood pressure, It’s probably best to consult a professional before trying it out, even just asking at the pharmacy could be helpful!

TENs Unit

A TENs unit is a tool that sends electric currents through your tissue to stimulate the nerves and relieve pain in an affected area. TENs units are sometimes used to relieve nerve pain in people who suffer from it, as well as being used to relieve period cramps! Personally I used it for the pain I experienced from my wrist injury, my trigger thumb pain, and my elbow tendonitis.

Knowing where to place the nodes of the TENs unit can help you use it to relieve pain more effectively. Here are some configurations I used to relieve pain in certain injuries.

For Tendonitis in the wrist:

For Carpal Tunnel in the wrist:

For pain in the Trigger Thumb:

For pain in the elbow:

When using a TENs unit, make sure to read the instructions carefully. Make sure the nodes do NOT touch each other, and do NOT place them on your chest or close to your spine. This can send electric currents to your vital organs or your spinal column, which can be incredibly dangerous!

4. Closing Thoughts; The Road to Recovery

A final reminder that I am not a monolith, nor a medical expert. I can’t guarantee that this will completely heal you as everyone’s body and injury is different. As someone who lived rurally and is too poor to have health insurance or see a doctor, I had to learn how to help myself in the ways that I can.

I hope that reading through this has given you a few ideas to help take better care of your arms/hands! Especially as we get older, it’s important to learn our limits and take good care of our body so we can keep using it for a long time.

Recovery can be tough, at times for me it was depressing and hopeless. I am still so glad I practiced self control and kept up these habits instead of trying to push through the pain. I am doing so much better now that I allowed myself to rest back then.

If you are struggling because all of your hobbies require your hands, I recommend trying to find some less intensive hobbies to try instead!Most of the difficulty for me personally through healing from a severe wrist injury was being depressed and unable to do things that fulfilled me like drawing or writing. I took up a few new hobbies that I genuinely love to keep doing now that I’m mostly recovered, such as coding / programming, and reading. Things that don’t require me to use those muscles too much.

If you are experiencing a severe injury that has left you unable to do things that are meaningful to you, I promise it gets better. You will be able to do those things again, even if there are some different habits you need to pick up along the way. If I had heard someone say that 6 months ago, I would not have believed them. But now I am able to draw, cook, write, and play games again almost like normal. There is hope for you in recovery too.

5. Image Links and Support

Thank you for reading this, this took a very long time to put together and edit for the two of us. If you are able to and would like to, Consider sending a Ko-fi to us to help support us! I'm disabled and unemployed so every bit helps :D

Below is a list of the places we grabbed images from, they also contain stretching excercises and instructions so consider checking them out too!

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