“Very stressed,” she said, summarizing the preliminary results.
When I recently walked into the office of Michelle Kuroda, a San Francisco acupuncturist, she said I was one of the lucky ones. She had just had two patients whose phone hands hurt so much that they had had to take leaves of absence from work.
“They were dropping things,” Ms. Kuroda said. “They couldn’t eat with forks.”
She said that it was unnatural to concentrate so much movement in one digit on such a small flat surface.
“We’re not meant to just use our thumbs all the time,” she said. “We’re meant to use all our fingers. That’s what our grip is for.”
She said the reason some people get phone thumb and others do not often comes down to stress. Cortisol and adrenaline, which the body releases when it feels stress, make one prone to inflammation and contribute to conditions like the one I was experiencing. She asked if I felt stressed, and I described a typical day monitoring Twitter.
“You kind of have a pre-existing condition just because of your lifestyle,” she said.
Ms. Kuroda left me with a cluster of needles in my hand and arm and told me to do body scans for an hour. She also prescribed several antidotes. They included turmeric, an anti-inflammatory, and cannabidiol, a non-psychotropic marijuana plant extract more commonly known as CBD.
Panic over tech and addiction comes and goes. When a new study comes out with jarring numbers or a fancy new gadget hits the market, the flurry of stories and conversations will start anew. We tell ourselves the bigger issue must be among the teenagers. And quickly we all get over it.
After a few weeks of resting my right thumb, it felt a lot better and almost completely back to normal. I use my left hand now — quite a lot, in fact.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/technology/smartphone-overuse-numb-thumb.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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