Texting Thumb Syndrome

Do you feel a wearing pain at the lower part of your thumb or thumb joints? And there is an urge to press the thumb to ease the pain. You may have the texting thumb syndrome.

Think back, if you have been texting continuously a few hours daily for several days or weeks, there is a high probability you had the texting thumb.

In fact texting thumb syndrome is a part of a more generic Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI). Basically, any repeating and continuous movement of your body parts can lead to RSI. Some parts like the thumb, fingers and wrist are more prone to RSI as they tend to get overused due to work or lifestyle factors.

Today, texting has become daily part of any mobile users life. It is easy to get addicted and text continuously. However, the layout of keypads on mobile phones today is not really natural for our fingers. The pressure you put on your thumb while texting may not be felt immediately, but the pain that comes afterwards may last for several days.

What can you do to remedy texting thumb syndrome? For immediate relief, massage the bottom of your thumb using press and release motion for 10 minutes. For rest of the week, try to stop using the affected thumb for texting or other strenuous work. If the thumb pain lasts for days, wear a flexible thumb brace to limit your thumb movement and allow it recover.

If left untreated, prolonged texting thumb syndrome could lead to thumb arthritis. Frequent grinding of thumb joints at rapid speed during texting will deteriorate the bone cartilage. At that point, the damage to your thumb may be irrecoverable.

If you really cannot stop texting, there is an alternative – get a touchscreen phone! Typing on touch screen requires less pressure and thus less stress on the thumb. However, to really avoid texting thumb syndrome is to refrain from using the thumb and fingers to0 frequently for too long.