If you think you have what you think is "carpal tunnel", you may actually have nerve inflammation somewhere else: tingling or numbness in the hand can also occur due to inflammation of the tissue around the nerve, or the nerve itself, in the neck (posture), shoulder (swimmers, ball players, or others with lax shoulder joints or history of dislocations) or elbow (a very low grade, chronic "funny bone" sort of impingement).
I'd suggest digging up an anatomy book (Grey's Anatomy or whatever) and comparing the location of your pain to a map of the nerves in your arm. This will help you debug the specific problem.
This is called referred pain. There is an amazing book called "The trigger point therapy workbook" that talks about these and how to treat them. It's helped me tremendously.
There's a series of wrist stretches associated with Aikido (a martial art that, among other things, involves a lot of wrist twists and joint locks) that I've found to be extremely helpful during many hours of typing. Their names will differ from school to school (mine called them "ikkyo, nikkyo, sankyo, yonkgo, gokyo", which pretty much just means "first, second, third..."), but googling for aikido wrist stretch should give you the general idea.
Also helpful for me: getting more exercise in general, good posture, getting enough sleep, Dvorak, taking breaks, xwrits, better keybindings, less mouse, etc.
Building on avoiding torsion in the forearms I was experiencing some discomfort in my mouse wrist. I bought an Evoluent vertical mouse and experienced a substantial improvement. Buying a second one so I could have one at home and one at university solved the issue entirely.
As mice go they're expensive, especially if you're not sure it's going to help, but can be picked up on ebay at a discount.
I discovered a similar exercise to the 3rd one shown a few years ago, and it really helps. Basically, you push your hand out like you were telling a car to stop, and pull your fingers back with your other hand. Like this:
That's just a short overview of the ideas, but reading the book "The Mindbody Prescription" by Dr John E Sarno is what "cured" me of what I thought was RSI. I recommend that anyone who thinks they have carpel tunnel syndrome or "RSI" read that book.
Wow. These are amazing. The one with your hand upside down against the tree was excruciating on my mousing hand, which is where I usually have problems, so I figure that's the problematic tendon. Let me give this a week and see if things improve...
Swimming is excellent because it's as close to zero-impact (e.g. not pounding pavement) as you can get. There was a point in my work career where I hurt and swimming every day after work helped.
If you're wondering or thinking "Swimming is hard" - go to http://totalimmersion.net (they teach you how to swim like fish do - not the standard Red Cross Mississippi Steamboat (paddle-wheel high-energy-required kick way)
