Green Thumb - Good; Blackberry Thumb - Bad

By Eric Sinrod, 

Color associated with your thumb can have a positive association. After all, having a "green thumb" means that you are deft at gardening and yielding bountiful harvests of vegetables.

Moreover, certain thumb-related activities can be related to having a favorable self-impression. Remember when little Jack Horner sat in his corner eating a mincemeat pie - he stuck in his thumb, pulled out a plum, and said "what a good boy am I."

But, these days, when you stick in your thumb and pull out a BlackBerry, you may mutter "what a sore thumb have I." Indeed, "Blackberry thumb" may be joining our modern day vocabulary as did "tennis elbow" some time back.

According to a recent report by the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), hand-held electronic devices, like BlackBerries, Treos and Sidekicks, are rapidly becoming a source of chronic pain and injury for device users.

Hand-held devices can lead to repetitive stress injury, which can cause pain and numbness in the thumbs and hand joints, as noted by Margot Miller, the President of APTA's Occupational Health Special Interest Group. She points out that this results from people spending far too much time using their hand-held devices for sending emails, instant messaging, and surfing the Internet for work and personal reasons.

Ms. Miller explains that hand-held device abusers are more likely to develop physical problems. These are people who use their devices at least several times a day for more than short periods of time. Symptoms can include swelling, throbbing and tendonitis. Furthermore, overuse of hand-held devices can aggravate underlying conditions such as arthritis.

In the world of portable devices, smaller has been deemed better in terms of the convenience of not having to lug around bulky equipment. However, there obviously is a price for smallness. The keyboards on hand-held devices are quite tiny, and much thumb use is required - yet the thumb is the least dexterous part of the hand, as notes Ms. Miller. Thus, the risk of thumb injury increases exponentially.

So, what are hand-held device users to do? Besides taking a break and smelling the real world roses once in a while (which your columnist highly recommends), employers can train employees in terms of best ways to hold and use hand-held devices. Employers can also encourage employees to send only short emails on their devices. Employers have an incentive in this regard, as they want a healthy and able workforce, and they want to minimize their own potential liability with respect to employees who have been injured by working on employer-provided hand-held devices.

Ms. Miller advises people to pay close attention to what their bodies are telling them. For example, if you start feeling pain in the thumb area, treatments such as icing, stretching, using a properly fitted thumb splint, and even cortisone injections can be warranted under various circumstances. Ms. Miller states that surgery sometimes is necessary.

Of course, it's better to head off a problem before it becomes serious. Ms. Miller recommends that upon the onset of symptoms, hand-held device users should seek out a physical therapist. And apparently, some resorts now are offering hand massages to soothe the aches and pains caused by hand-held device use.

I can assure you that no thumbs were damaged in the creation of this piece, as it was typed on a full keyboard in front of a computer screen and not on a hand-held device.

Communications

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