Text addict teens face crippling injury
March 10th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed
This I thought was a great article. I know that the kids today live on their cell phones and all I see is text messaging going on. With all the problems with carpel tunnel and repetitive strain injury from the use of computers and the mouse, I can’t imagine what is going to happen in the future with text messaging. I don’t think that they realize what could happen to them with the repetitive strain injury to their thumbs.
Children who constantly text message their friends are at risk from developing repetitive strain injury (RSI), health experts have warned.
Regular texting using just the thumb to type can cause pain and swelling in the tendons and could eventually result in a long term injury, said the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists (CSP).
As phones get smaller and more and more children acquire the technology, they are at risk of developing a condition more often associated with desk-bound adults.
The release of GCSE results this week could see the number of texts sent by children soar as they send their results to friends and family, said the CPS.
RSI risk
Bronwyn Clifford, of the Association of Chartered Physiotherapists in Occupational Health and Ergonomics, said: “Physiotherapists are recognising that text messaging regularly, over a long period of time, could cause RSI. The thumb is not a very dexterous digit. It is good at grasping but not good for repetitive movement.”
“As mobile phone technology develops, handsets are getting smaller with buttons closer together. Small, fine movements tend to aggravate more than larger movements. If the buttons are smaller they can be more difficult to activate.”
In order to avoid pain, Ms Clifford said: “Don’t spend more than 5-10 minutes at a time text messaging and, if you must stay constantly in touch, try to spread the load and use both your fingers and thumbs to text.”
What I have been noticing is the kids use their thumbs to text as we adults use all of our fingers to type. Some of the phones are made especially for text messaging. These young adults can really move along when they text. I have watched and man oh man, can they go fast just using their thumbs. We will just have to see what the result of all this texting is. Time will tell if the report is true. It sure makes sense to me.
Taken from an article at:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/womenfamily.html?in_article_id=360058&in_page_id=1799
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The Culpruts of Tendonitis - Can You Determine Them?
February 16th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed
To uncover the cause of tendonitis is not easy to discover. If you have inflammation, pain and swelling and the trauma of tendonitis, you know it is hard to figure out how you got it. So what can be the cause of tendonitis? There are many different things that can cause tendonitis, and the treatment relies partly on finding the cause of tendonitis, so you can treat the cause as well as the symptoms. Before you can look for the cause of tendonitis, you must first understand the problem. There is an expression called “tennis elbow”, which seems to suggest that tendonitis affects the elbow and arm only. This is just not true. Tendonitis can affect just about any tendon in your body. What is tendonitis? Tendonitis is the inflammation and pain in your tendons. Tendons attach the muscle to the bone. There are many reasons that cause inflammation and that is what makes finding the cause of tendonitis very hard if not impossible.
What are some of the common causes of tendonitis?
Injury: A very common cause of tendonitis is probably injury. Sports injury is the most common cause of tendonitis, when the tendons become inflamed. Some experience injury later only to find that they have tendonitis after the original injury has healed.
Overuse: Another common cause of tendonitis. Frequent, repetitive motions put strain on the tendons, which will cause those tendons to become sore and inflamed. This is the cause of “tennis elbow” mentioned above. This is due to the repetitive motion which a tennis player does and causes the tendons in the elbow to become inflamed. Another one is “carpal tunnel”. This can be the start of a wrist tendonitis symptom. This happens to factory workers and occurs in the wrist and the hands. Musicians, particularly pianists and those spending great amounts of time on the computer also develop tendonitis. This is due to overuse and occurs also in the wrist.
Aging is another cause of tendonitis: As we get older, so do our tendons. We loose the elasticity, thus allowing them to become susceptible to inflammation, especially when they are overused. While sometimes the cause of tendonitis cannot be helped, there are things that you should avoid, or you will make the problem worse. If you start to notice swelling or soreness in an area that you have been over working, stop for a while. Give that part of your body a rest. Put some ice on the area to help reduce the swelling. Take some Ibuprofen for the pain if necessary. Using the ice and getting the swelling down is the main goal. This will prevent the tendonitis from getting worse. Now you know the cause of tendonitis and you can start to prevent it.
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Related Tags: repetitive strain injury, RSI, symptom tendonitis wrist, tennis elbow tendonitis
