Cubital Tunnel Syndrome is TMS (Full Recovery)

First is the exposition of my story. Lastly, I will say the best insights that helped me.

Physical Diagnosis: Cubital Tunnel Syndrome/Ulnar Nerve Entrapment/Ulnar Nerve Subluxation

I developed strange elbow pain during the summer of 2020. I attributed it to my calisthenics routine, which involved high repetitions of weighted and unweighted pushups and pullups. First, I tried to rest for a few weeks, but the pain persisted. This is when I started to obsessively google my symptoms. After some research I purchased a flex bar, which is effective against golfer's elbow (my pain was on the outside of my elbow, and I had been doing lots of pullups, so this seemed like the best diagnosis). I did the flexbar exercises religiously but nothing changed. I noticed the pain was kind of like what the internet said golfer's elbow was but also, I got shooting pains like hitting my funny bone down from my elbow to my fingers. More googling and I discovered cubital tunnel syndrome otherwise known as ulnar nerve entrapment. This is similar to carpal tunnel but at the elbow and affecting the ring and pinky fingers rather than the thumb index and middle. It affects the ulnar nerve aka your funy bone. At this point, I saw an orthopedic surgeon, who suggested I wait a little longer to see if it went away on its own. If not, he said he could do an ulnar nerve transposition to reroute the nerve. It was supposed to be an easy surgery. Still, this freaked me out and I thankfully decided to wait.

I stopped exercising for the rest of the summer and the pain went away. In the fall, I decided it was all behind me and started lifting. Things were going smooth, until one day I curled a heavy dumbbell and all the pain came back. This triggered a horrible downward spiral that lasted for about a year. I would google my symptoms over and over reading the same search results I had read the day or the hour before, click through pages and pages of any forum where cubital tunnel was being discussed, look up different treatment options. The pain level went up and down, but I always felt it.

In this time, I developed ulnar nerve subluxation. I could feel the nerve click over my elbow when I bent it, and this would send pain shooting down my arm. The pain moved around to different spots in my elbow. I thought that if I didn't have this problem, everything would be great like an extreme version of when you just want to breath but your nose is stuffed. I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. I isolated myself severely for months, probably the worst thing I did, and covid life only enabled this behavior. At my most hopeful, I would think maybe I can live mostly normal, but I'll have to put up with a lot of pain. At my worst, I legitimately thought life would be better off with just the one unaffected arm. I tried all kinds of stretching and strengthening routines. I bought a flex tend glove and did the 9-week program. Then a "Powerball". All the while, I constantly monitored how my elbow felt. I could not stop bending my arm to see if the nerve would still snap and to see if the pain got better or worse. I got my cubital tunnel diagnosis confirmed by and EKG and the doctor was prepared to operate.

Even with the EKG, I had my doubts about surgery. There was no good reason why the nerve was getting caught up or started snapping. It just was

Desperate for a solution, I found Dr. Sarno's books. Unfortunately, it wasn't an instant fix but they worked and my condition improved. I read and re read the Mind body syndrome. I read Steve Ozanich's' The Great Pain Deception. I read the TMS wiki and listened to TMS podcasts. I started working out again and journaling. Today, I feel great 99% of the time. Sometimes, I will still have my doubts and feel a little something. This makes sense considering I spent about a full year of my life by myself conditioning myself to believe I was ruined.


My Insights:

Accepting TMS Framework
TMS has a Freudian framework. This does not mean you have to accept all of Freud's thoughts and teachings to accept TMS. Say what you will about him and his ideas, but Freud for sure got one thing right. Humans have an unconscious mind that affects our moods, feelings, emotions, and physical bodies. How it works is still up for debate. After Freud, this work was taken up by Carl Jung and others. Today, it is the field of depth psychology. I suggest looking into this if you want a greater understanding of the capability of the mind to cause physical symptoms. Fair warning, this could be an anxiety inducing rabbit hole of its own if you really want to go deep into it, but that's not necessary for this purpose.

I only considered TMS as a last measure. I think this actually helped me. I searched and searched for alternative diagnosis and tried many different therapies. Yet, non worked. The rationale for surgery was also pretty poor from my perspective. TMS made the most sense and the knowledge that I'd considered all the alternatives allowed me to accept it

Journaling
For me personally, I couldn't just believe it was mental and be done with it. I needed to see what this mental block was to really believe it was causing such a noticeable physical problem. For this I took to journaling - mostly about fears, insecurities, anxieties, regrets, plans, grudges. Be totally honest. I was very surprised at some of the things I was holding onto and feelings I had been ignoring. Everyone has them if you're really being honest. It's cliche and harder than it seems but steel yourself and face what's in there.

Exercise
This is necessary. Putting your money where your mouth is in terms of the TMS struggle. The pain was strong on every rep and I feared I was damaging myself more when I got back into lifting. I kept telling myself that if I'm convinced it's TMS then this fear doesn't make sense. I did try to avoid the snapping by limiting range of motion, but I didn't freak out when it happened. Now my elbow rarely snaps and I have normal range of motion after gradually pushing it.

Is There a Psychical Component?
A legitimate physical issue could be a trigger - For example, maybe I really was overworking my elbow from the pullups which caused my nervous system to send pain signals but because of the highly agitated state I was suppressing the pain response got stuck on "on" even if the original reason for the pain was gone.

Maybe this is not the dogma, but I do think bad body mechanics exasperate the issue. Bad body mechanics like TMS cause tension. Maybe this tension gives TMS a springboard. At the very least it increases stress. I fixed my anterior pelvic tilt, forward head posture, and rounded shoulders after making some good initial progress with the Sarno books. Doing this gave me more confidence in the TMS diagnosis. After all it couldn't be my posture. It also got me moving and made me feel generally better, which helps.





I hope this will help people. Probably the only good thing that came out of my obsessive googling was this thread which documents someone else's experience with cubital tunnel and TMS. He also recovered

Help...Ulnar Nerve Entrapment - Bodybuilding - Forums - T Nation (t-nation.com)

 

@SAWDOG
Did you overcome your pelvic tilt, shoulder and forward head using only the TMS approach or did you also use physical means?

I ask because these are just some of my symptoms and are currently really challenging me again.

Thanks!

 

Amazing story! Congratulations on your recovery! Would you like to have a short version of it posted on this site? http://www.thankyoudrsarno.org/ (Thank You, Dr. Sarno)
It is so important to let the world know that cubital tunnel syndrome is TMS? I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, and it was, too, TMS! You can DM me your short story and I will post it.

 

I'm just starting my journey with symptoms similar to yours. Your story gives me great hope!

 

@Cactusflower I know this is years later but maybe it will help someone. I had postural issues clearly caused by excess sitting/computer use so I used physical means.

I’ve had a few years to reflect and I don’t think changing my posture did much to help besides making me feel better/more confident. Look around and you will notice a large percentage of people with forward head tilt and APT due to our computer lifestyles but 99% of those people don’t have Cubital or carpal tunnel. I don’t even know if these posture problems are necessarily “unhealthy” - just the body adapting to where it often finds itself. However standing up straight helps you feel better emotionally so it’s helps in a roundabout way.

 

Will you post exercises that fixed your anterior pelvic tilt? I have this not tms related but I would like to fix it for posture and aesthetic purposes

 

For me the main problem was having weak/non activated glutes. Doing daily high repetition banded hip thrusts was helpful especially before exercise - “Waking up” these muscles especially the glute medius. I would do high rep banded hip thrusts every day like 100+ total reps before whatever activity. Most helpful would be doing that and then weighted squats 1x or 2x a week really focusing on feeling it in my glutes. Also sitting less and occasionally just squeezing my glutes when I’m walking. I’ve learned to take everything online with a grain of salt but my take is the body just adapts to what it needs to do in the most energy saving way possible. So if it’s constantly sitting with the glutes off it will just keep them off. I figured I needed to “force” them on - give the body a reason. It’s impossible to do hip thrusts without glute activation even if you don’t feel it at first. Pushing the bands with your knees and Relaxing and focusing in on them helps get that muscle connection. I was hesitant to post this because it can absolutely become something else to TMS about. Achieving ideal posture is one of the classic concerns of the morning routine, optimization, supplementation crowd which oftentimes turns into a TMS style obsession.

 

Hi Sawdog,

Did you ever have numbness in your pinky and ring finger? If so, did it ever go away? It is pretty crazy, I slept wrong one night and basically woke up with ulnar nerve irritation. The numbness has gotten better with time, but never has went away over the past year. If I do any type of weightlifting, the numbness gets worse, which is frustrating because I have a history of osteoporosis in my family and would like to build bone strength. I do have TMS, so I am hoping this is just another symptom imperative. If it is not TMS, the only thing I can think of that could have caused it is having to pull on dog leashes several times a week as I walk my Labs, and sometimes I use my hand to rest on in a reclined position while my arm is bent at the elbow. It is still weird though, because I literally went to sleep feeling fine and woke up with my arm underneath my head under my pillow and the numbness.