Over texting could lead to “Texting Tenosynovitis”

 

Tenosynovitis is the inflammation of the fluid-filled sheath (called the synovium) that surrounds a tendon. Symptoms of tenosynovitis include pain, swelling , and difficulty moving a particular joint where the inflammation occurs. When the condition causes the finger to “stick” in a flexed position, this is called “stenosing” tenosynovitis, which is commonly called “Trigger Finger.” – Wikipedia

Just recently, a woman from New Zealand was diagnosed of suffering from Texting Tenosynovitis.

New Zealand student Fleur de Vere Beavis, 20, who sends up to 100 text messages a day on her mobile phone, has been diagnosed with the country’s first known case of texting tenosynovitis, otherwise known as text-messager’s thumb, a newspaper reported.

Constant text messaging has inflamed the tendons along the thumb and side of the wrist and filled the surrounding tissue with fluid, the Sunday Star-Times said, quoting a report in the New Zealand Medical Journal.

It said only two other cases of the ailment had been reported in a school-aged child in Singapore and a 13-year-old girl in Australia, but the authors of the journal report, Emma Storr and Mark Stringer, said tenosynovitis was likely to be more common than thought, given the popularity of texting.

New Zealand with a population of 4.2 million people has about 4.5 million mobile phones in use and more than 28 million text messages are sent every day. – The Age

Here are some of my suggestions to avoid this:

1. Don’t over do it. Text only when needed.

2.  Rest your thumbs often.

3.  Give your hands a “hand spa” or hand massage often. Maybe one to two times a month will do.

4. Use Text to speech programs for your phone. This feature is only for the disabled but it would be useful to prevent this.

5. Use a phone with  soft keypads! Like the 6233. It has soft kepads.. and even if i text a lot, i don’t feel any sore thumb! Don’t use phones with hard keys.