Beware of ‘iPod finger’ and other overuse injuries
My doctor laughed when I told him I had “iPod Finger.”
It woke me in the middle of the night, a throbbing pain so severe at the base of my right index finger it felt as if it were broken – except I wasn’t drunk and I hadn’t fallen out of bed.
What I had done, however, was spend hours on the laptop stroking the mouse pad and punching the “right-click” button, scrolling endlessly through my 8,000 and growing iTunes playlists. Then, for fun’s sake, I spun my finger ‘round and ‘round the wheel making sure every song was in its perfect place.
Doc chuckled, suggesting I ought to coin a more personalized name for my self-diagnosed malady.
However, to the American Society of Hand Therapists (ASHT), “iPod Finger,” as well as BlackBerry Thumb, is no laughing matter. Repetitive stress injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome are no longer the domain of typists, laptop users or video game junkies. The Chicago-based group has issued an alert to users of the popular hand-held gadgets to be aware of overuse injuries.
“Hand-held electronics may require prolonged grips, repetitive motion on small buttons and awkward wrist movements. This combination can lead to hand, wrist and arm ailments such as carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis,” ASHT President Donna Breger Stanton said in a statement.
BlackBerry users, for instance, use their thumbs to feverishly scroll through e-mails. They flex, stretch and move the digit side to side. The thumb isn’t cut out for such dexterity work, says Dr. Andrew Sherman, an assistant professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Miami. The keys are smaller than on a computer keyboard so you press harder.
It’s all part of repetitive strain injuries (RSI), the workplace’s most common and costly occupational health problem, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). RSI injuries affect hundreds of thousands of workers and cost more than $20 billion a year in workers’ compensation, OSHA estimates. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found that carpal tunnel syndrome, which can lead to pain, numbness, tingling, burning, coldness of the hand and possible loss of function, accounts for about 50 percent of work-related injuries. More than 8 million are affected by carpal tunnel yearly, with women being twice as likely to develop the ailment as men.
‘It can happen’
Medical experts said they haven’t seen a rush of walking wounded iPod devotees streaming into their offices just yet. “But it’s coming, it can happen,” Sherman says.
“That’s why we’re putting out the warnings because of the potential to have problems are out there,” adds ASHT Vice President Stacey Doyon.
Doyon also pays heed to laptops.
“They are so small and tiny that to squeeze your hands onto the keyboard is not a natural position for you to be in,” she said.
In relation to laptops, “Most of the RSI problems we’ve seen has been in the neck and shoulders due to posturing,” says Dr. Vincent Perez, director of the Department of Sports Therapy at Columbia Eastside in Manhattan.
The iPod, with its touch-sensitive wheel, is less problematic. “We haven’t seen as many problems because most of the time people put it on shuffle,” Doyon believes, “but someone doing it for two to three hours – setting up songs for a wedding – using such a small movement for such a long time and pressing with (the finger) may have a problem with (RSI).”
Sara Lee study
Dr. Anne Ouellette, chief of hand services at University of Miami/Jackson Memorial, cites an example from a few years back of how repetitive motions can lead to tendonitis.
“The Sara Lee bakery studied how quickly things were moving down the (conveyor) line and how quickly people were asked to do things, like boning chickens. If you asked the personnel to debone a chicken at a rate of every three seconds, they had more incidents of inflammatory problems. If they slowed it down to only every five seconds a chicken, they pretty much eliminated the problems.”
The point? Slow down and take a break every so often. There are many exercises you can do to ward off symptoms of hand pain.
“The key to BlackBerry Thumb and iPod Finger to Mouse Index Finger is to break (the activity) up and then do some stretching so the finger isn’t held rigidly in one spot,” suggests Ouellette.
And we’re not suggesting you mothball the iPod, either. On the contrary. The October Men’s Fitness magazine reports that Yale researchers recently concluded that patients who listen to tunes during surgery required less anesthesia, which aided recovery time.
Something to think about while getting treated for iPod Finger.