Do I have Tendonitis or Carpal Tunnel From Swiping Too Much?
You know that aching feeling in your wrist after holding your phone too long? Or when your thumb feels like it literally needs to take a rest? Just another blessing from excessive amounts of time spent on our digital devices! Lately we’ve been feeling the consequences of over-swiping at night, so we massage our hands and wrists with CBD cream and try to soak in epsom salt baths when we can. Since we’re afflicted with Woody Allen Syndrome (the hypochondria, not the pedophilia), we started googling to see if we have early on-set carpal tunnel. It turns out that more times than not, it’s probably tendonitis aka inflammation of your tendons. Also known as the “chord” that attaches bone to muscle. In order to figure out what is going on with our wrists and hands on a physiological level and what we can do to fix this aching (because let’s be real, we’re not putting down our phones anytime soon) we picked the brain of Dr. Amanda Walsh, Hand Surgeon and Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Dr. Walsh spends her days seeing patients in the office and performing surgery in the operating room. She’s dedicated her life to helping people regain hand function and improving quality of life for many, so we’re grateful we got the chance to get info straight from the expert for this edition of Highly Qualified. Mindfully scroll down (LOL) to get the 411 on how to keep your hands and wrists in good shape so that you don’t age your tendons before their time.
Are people coming to you more often with wrist complaints? Do you credit this to how much time we spend swiping and tapping and holding our phones?
Absolutely. While cell phone usage isn’t the only thing that can cause wrist problems, there’s certainly a lot of different pathologies and overuse complaints that we see related to cell phone use in a lot of patients. It’s all positional; we hold our hands in a very specific position when we use smart devices and the motion we make is very repetitive. Those are two things that can contribute to overuse syndrome with handheld devices.
What do you recommend people do in order to stop the progression of hand/wrist exhaustion?
A lot of what we see with wrist and hand pain from cellphones is mostly tendonitis at the wrist or trigger thumb, which is inflammation of the tendons that bend our thumb. Carpal tunnel is a compression of the median nerve, which applies sensation to your thumb, index and middle fingers—and that would feel more like numbness and tingling. There’s less causality between increased phone usage and carpel tunnel syndrome. People used to think that typing a lot caused carpal tunnel and there’s symptom research that shows that isn’t necessarily true, but holding your wrist in a flexed, bent position can increase pressure and lead to carpal tunnel syndrome. What I recommend is for patients to notice the one, specific way they’re holding their phone and try and alternate their habits so they’re not holding it the same way every time. It’s all about decreasing the stress on specific tendons to decrease the stress on the wrist and decrease pain in that area.
So if my wrist hurts, it’s probably tendonitis and not carpal tunnel, right?
Yes, that’s most likely tendonitis or just inflammation of the tendons or joints. There are many different areas that this can occur. By the thumb is a very common place and on the thumb-side of the wrist and the wrist level near the pinky finger.
How do you feel about CBD creams or wax dips for people who have tendonitis?
A lot of this is anecdotal because there isn’t strong research that supports most of these things, but just because there isn’t good research on it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. A lot of these things are not harmful, so it’s a worth a try. I’ve had many patients tell me that CBD cream has worked wonders. Same thing with wax dips, which occupational therapists use a lot. There’s also topical anti-inflammatory prescription creams like Diclofenac. Stretching whichever muscle is associated with the tendon that is tight helps, too. I would recommend looking into an occupational therapist to advise on activity modification and strategies to modify your workspace to minimize repetitive injuries to the upper extremities. They’re really helpful for a lot of people!
The Dandy’s Favorite CBD Creams
Vertly: Relief Lotion
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Ellis Brooklyn: Extra Rich Body Cream
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Plant People: Relief & Cooling Body Cream
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