"WhatsAppitis" : is real, and happening!

"WhatsAppitis" : is Real and Happening

What if you are told that excessive chatting or texting on 'WhatsApp' messenger service can hamper your health to an extent that you get a thumb disease!

"WhatsAppitis" is real, and happening.

A report in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, said that "WhatsAppitis" is a credible disease, after a doctor in Spain diagnosed a 34-year-old female patient with bilateral wrist pain induced by excessive use of 'Whatsapp'

"She held her mobile phone for at least six hours and continuously used both thumbs to send messages to relatives and friends," Spanish physician Ines M Fernandez-Guerrero wrote in the journal.

Prolonged and repetitive movements can result in tendon inflammation and injury. This results in pain and difficulty in moving the thumb

The next morning, that woman woke up with
painfull wrists.

"The diagnosis for the bilateral wrist pain was 'WhatsAppitis'," Fernandez-Guerrero added.

He treated the woman with non-steroidal,
anti-inflammatory drugs and asked her to
completely avoid using the cell phone to send
messages.

We can’t deny the fact that it’s now hard to imagine a day without our smartphones by our side.

The use of smartphones has grown rapidly over the last decade. This coupled with the availability of affordable and practically unlimited internet data packs has contributed to people spending a significant amount of their day browsing social media and on messaging apps. It is estimated that smartphone users spend more than three hours every day on their phones. People often look at their phone screens more than 100 times each day. The overuse of smartphones has resulted in certain peculiar medical conditions.

Other medical conditions of the hand due
to smartphone overuse:

• De Quervain’s Tenosynovitis is another condition where there is inflammation of the tendons of the thumb due to overuse of handheld electronic devices. It is also known as ‘BlackBerry thumb’, ‘texting thumb’ or ‘gamer’s thumb’.

• Overuse of smartphones may also increase the risk of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome which is characterized by pain, tingling, burning, and numbness along the area of the thumb, index, middle and half of the ring finger. Prolonged smartphone usage can also cause Arthritis of the joints at the base of the thumb.

There can also be a decrease in grip strength or range of motion.

The opposable thumb is very good at perfor
-ming opposing actions to the hand and fingers,
known
as gripping. The muscles and mechanics of your
anatomy support this function.

Texting Thumb can be a form of tendonitis (inflammation of tissue connecting muscle to bone), tenosynovitis(inflammation of the tendon sheath) or a combination of both of those disorders. In either case, it means something is irritated, inflamed and swollen. In Texting Thumb there is an inflammation of the tendons and/or the synovial sheaths that cover the tendons that control the motion of your thumb.

How WhatsAppitis can be treated?

Treatment of WhatsAppitis is just like most other medical conditions, and ‘prevention is better than cure’, here too. Keep your smartphone use in check. There are several apps that can track your daily screen time along with the details of time spent on different apps. Use this feedback to limit your smartphone usage.

There are few tips to help you avoid smartphone hand pain:

• While using smartphones, keep your wrists straight, try to hold your phone in both the hands.
• Do not use your phone for more than 15-20 minutes at a time.
• Avoid marathon browsing or messaging sessions
• The use of larger and heavier smartphones can further increase the risk of tendon injury. Using the voice message function of popular messaging apps may be better than typing the message in order to reduce the strain on your thumb.
• Vary the hand you use.

A periodic ‘smartphone detox’ can also be beneficial. If you already have symptoms of WhatsAppitis, your doctor may prescribe anti-inflammatory medications and a wrist brace in addition to the above. Evolution is a slow process. Our hands are yet to adapt to this swiftly rising use of smartphones in our day-to-day lives. Till then, we must be judicious with our smartphone usage.

Exercises

There are few exercises of hand, specially thumb exercises can help you to reduce symptoms.Stop these exercises if you feel any pain otherwise you can do more harm than good.

If you have texting hand :-

• Tap each finger with the thumb of the same hand. Repeat x 5
• Pull your thumb firmly with the other hand. Repeat x 5
• Wrap an elastic band around the tips of fingers and thumb and open your hand against the resistance. Repeat x 20
• Palms down wrap an elastic band around each thumb and force apart. Repeat x 20
• Tap the palm and back of your hand on your thigh as quickly as you can. Repeat x 20
• Massage thumb web, back of forearm and front of forearm. 2 minutes.
• Press and rub in a circular motion the painful nodules in those muscles. 30 seconds for each nodule.
• If it still hurts after a week of doing exercises wrap an ice pack on sore hand and arm parts. Do not put ice directly on the skin but wrap in a thin cloth or piece of kitchen roll. 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off. Repeat x 3.

If there will be no improvement in your pain then go and consult with your Doctor or Physiotherapist ,but do not delay !