Digit damage from a busy BlackBerry
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ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- If you are one of those busy professionals who incessantly taps on a handheld device in airport lounges, coffee shops or office hallways you may want to consider the damage it is doing to your digits.
Now the popular handheld electronic device known as the BlackBerry is spawning its own particular ailment -- "overuse syndrome" or "BlackBerry thumb."
Now greater attention is being paid to possible injuries that come from overworking our opposable digits on a small handheld device.
Overuse can cause the thumbs and the wrist to throb in some cases. The condition is called tendonitis or inflammation of the tendons.
"BlackBerry thumb may not to be an official diagnosis, but it is a reality," Bette Keltner, who suffers from handheld device-induced tendonitis, told CNN.
"It is a limit to life -- you cannot move your thumbs, open doors, comb hair and do routine things. It is chronic and continuous and it would keep me awake at night."
According to BlackBerry's manufacturer, Canadian firm Research In Motion, there will be three million users of its products by the end of 2005. The device's popularity has even spawned a new term -- the "CrackBerry" -- which refers to its addiction.
"Just as the keyboard and the computer led to a lot of concern about repetitive stress of typing. This is the next wave of concern, with the use of the thumb on a handheld device," says Keith Raskin M.D. from the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the New York University Medical Center.
Raskin believes that young people are protected because they have more fluid in their joints, whereas those with a history of arthritis or tendonitis in their body, as well as the elderly, are more likely to be prone to aches in their thumbs.
And the thumb, with one fewer joint than the rest of the fingers, is more sensitive to stress than the other three-jointed fingers.
"If patients (repeatedly) flex or extend their wrists they may put undue stress on the thumbs with this motion," explains Raskin.
"Ideally wrists should be in neutral position with the thumbs resting freely without stress. If patients reduce the workload the symptoms will resolve."
Keltner says she has had little relief, even after weeks of occupational therapy, painkillers, acupuncture and acupressure. Only when she quit her completely did the pain end.
"My productivity is not the same. I can no longer do e-mails at three a.m. in the morning. In fact I make a lot more telephone calls. But it is not as quick and not as convenient," Keltner complains.
"It is really a great tool and if my thumbs did not hurt I would still be using it."
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta contributed to this report
