Hands : The Gateway to Upper Body Function

The human hand is made up of 27 bones, 27 joints, 34 muscles, over 100 ligaments and tendons. Our hands enable us to perform many of our daily activities and for many of us we take our hands for granted until we jam a finger or cut a finger open to require stitches. We then realize our hands control a lot more than whats in your hands.

When we watch a baby develop we see the baby grabbing all kinds of things with their hands, they put their full hand in their mouth, and they use their hands to eventually create movement through crawling. Crawling teaches the baby how to walk. Once the baby stands and walks we rarely use our hands in the way we did the first year of our lives. This can becomes problematic as we move along with life.

There are 17,000 nerve endings in each hand and three arches in each hand. Yes you have arches not only in your feet, you have them in your hands. Your hands are designed to be used well beyond typing on keyboard and using your phone. They are designed to bear weight on the ground and support your upper body in a similar way your feet are designed to support your lower body.

Incorporating movements on our hands where we are strengthening our arches in your hands and the sensitivity of the nerve endings in our hands is essential to maintaining function within your upper extremities. When helping people heal upper body injuries and alleviate pain well aligned exercises performed on the hands are an essential ingredient to long term function and injury prevention.

Johnny