People who spend too much time texting may be at increased risk of having “smartphone thumb”, a painful condition caused by repetitive movements of typing that may lead to arthritis in the thumb, doctors have warned.<\/p>\n
Formally known as tendinitis, the condition was earlier only seen in factory workers. It causes the tendon that bends and flexes the thumb to become inflamed.<\/p>\n
But with increased use of smartphone for our daily activities, this type of pain has become more common over the years in the US, according to a CBSNews.com report.<\/p>\n
“One of the hypotheses is that, you know, the joints get loose and lax, and because of that the bones kind of move differently than they would in a normal situation,” Kristin Zhao, a biomedical engineer at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester was quoted as saying by CBS Minnesota.<\/p>\n
The movements we require our thumbs to make as we hold our phones are awkward, Zhao said.<\/p>\n
“It’s also a movement that requires some force through the thumbs. It’s not just free movement in space,” she explained.<\/p>\n
“Our hypothesis is that abnormal motion of bones in the thumb could be causing pain onset and eventual osteoarthritis,” Zhao said.<\/p>\n
The ways to prevent the problem include giving your thumbs a break, using your forefinger sometimes, and doing daily stretching exercises to keep your tendons limber, among others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People who spend too much time texting may be at increased risk of having “smartphone thumb”, a painful condition caused by repetitive movements of typing that may lead to arthritis in the thumb, doctors have warned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":4372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4371"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4371"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4373,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4371\/revisions\/4373"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}