After spending a weekend with my granddaughters, watching them text their every thought, it reminded me of an article I wrote a few years ago titled “Blackberry Thumb. Is This Leading to The Next Generation of Hand/Wrist Problems.”
After watching the girls I realized that now, way more then in 2008 when I wrote this article, this problem is becoming a reality!
The thick muscle of your thumb, called the opponens pollicis, is responsible for drawing your thumb in toward your palm. If you press your opposite finger into the thick muscle that is between your thumb and the center of your wrist, and then bring your thumb in to touch your pinky, you’ll feel the muscle contract. The problem is this muscle is impossible to stretch, yet the muscle will definitely suffer from a repetitive strain injury from the overuse it receives while texting. To complicate this issue, your opponens pollicis originates at the bridge to your carpal tunnel, so when it is tight it pulls on the bridge (the flexor retinaculum) and puts pressure on your median nerve, causing carpal tunnel syndrome. To see good graphics that show you all of this go to www.aboutCTS.com.
Fortunately you don’t need surgery to resolve the numbness in your thumb and fingers, you just need to apply pressure to release the tension in your thumb muscle. It’s easy, and the results are fast. This simple little technique can stop a lot of pain, and also prevent a lot of unnecessary surgery!
Wishing you well,
Julie
P.S. If you’d like to read the article, go to www.julstro.com/articles.html. It’s article number C1.
thumbinjuries
Lets hope we get software like dragon naturally speaking to transcribe words that we speak into text for our cellphones so that blackberry thumb can be completely avoided.