Blackberry Thumb

Do you have constant pain in your thumbs? Are you an admitted Blackberry addict? You may have fallen victim to the trendiest new malady: Blackberry Thumb. Actually a form of repetitive motion injury that results in tendinitis in the soft tissue around the thumb joints, “Blackberry Thumb” is cropping up with ever greater frequency as an orthopaedic complaint. According to Alan Hedge, director of the human factors and ergonomics research group at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, “The thumb is not a very dexterous part of the hand. It is really designed as a stabilizer for pinch gripping with a finger.

That is why you only have two of them, not eight. It is the fingers that have dexterity, not the thumb.” The treatment is painful but simple: Lay off the thumb typing for a week or more then cut back on your Blackberry use to a sane level afterward. In severe cases, a physician can inject cortisone into the thumb joint for temporary relief, but over the long haul you’ll have to change your ways.