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Could Your Blackberry Be Damaging Your Thumbs?
Sammy at Palm Addict writes "According to the BBC, Regular Blackberry use 'could damage thumbs', experts warn. Trendy handheld Blackberry devices could cause damage to users' thumbs, doctors are warning. Sales of the £200 gadget, which can be used to email, page and phone, have boomed in recent years with celebrities such as David Beckham using them. But US and UK doctors said repetitive use could cause arthritis or harm tendons in the thumb. Research in Motion, which manufactures the Blackberry, said it would not comment on the claims."
And years ago I got a GyroMouse which required the right thumb to press mouse buttons and was definitely less strain that the index finger pushing down all the time. Maybe I should be glad I'm back to an old-stlye mouse. Meanwhile, how about millions of people using their thumbs on all those Game Boys and such? Are we headed for an epidemic of arthritic thumbs? It could make tobacco settlements look tame.
celebrities such as David Beckham using them.
He doesn't need his thumbs anyway.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The finding seems to be about the difference between thumbs and fingers, and the fact that thumbs are not designed to be tapping away for prolonged period.
However, why is it targeting Blackberry only? I would imagine this HP4350 and many other devices will give similar problems.
Next time they'll find most Roman emperors died of Occupational Overuse Syndrome because they kept using their thumbs on gladiators or lions.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Next thing they'll be saying is "smoking causes cancer." Give me a break with your "science!"
How is this any different from any other mobile device, remote control, game controller, or similar item which has buttons we press repeatedly?
(First Post?)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
...andmythumbsarefine.Justlook,Ihavenoproblemswith typing.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
People damage thumbs.
Infuriate left and right
I guess its back to playing pacman then.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Seems they took a lot of time and effort to basically say...
"Using your thumbs a lot might make them sore at some point in time."
Like someone else mentioned, its silly that are focusing on one product that will cause this. Almost makes you wonder who got the idea to do this article.
If you know what I mean.
Seriously, doctors in the UK need to take chill pill. It seems every day some Royal Academy of Whatchamacalit is pontificating on the dangers of everything.
How is a Blackberry any different than your average game controller? I remember the old-school Nintendo nothing (not 64, Super, etc.) had the most painful control pad i've ever used, I'd get "The Claw" from playing it for more than a couple hours.
Seems a bit nuts to go all Doomsday about this when kids use their thumbs 6 hours a day playing console video games... and when their thumbs hurt, they stop. You don't see GenXers walking around with crippled thumbs, do you?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
He said he had not heard of any cases to date however.
Let me know when millions of video-game playing American teenagers develop osteoarthritis. This is a BS study- prolonged anything can potentially hurt you.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
...researchers have found that excessive "spanking your blackberry" can cause blindness.
This way to the egress...
And of course you need to look out for thorns, they'll really tear up your thumbs if you're not careful
God spoke to me.
the risk of damaging their thumbs from other "regular activities" greatly outweighs the risk posed by Blackberry use.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
1) A handful of researchers think that using your Blackberry "repeatedly" might cause thumb damage.
2) There have been no reported cases of said damage yet.
That's pretty much it. A lot of "The Blackberry could..." talk, but little else.
Sounds a little bit like that movie The Jerk
I'm that if we use the crackberries long enough that evolution will mutate our opposable thumbs into something capable of dealing with it... Who knows, by then maybe RIM will have finally reached a settlement in it's lawsuits against it in court.
There. That just saved us years of research and tens of millions of dollars. Please remit 10% of that to me for my valuable input.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
"Really you should not be making more than a few hundred thumb movements a day, so that does not amount to that many words when you think about it."
We can only hope that with Tivo's new SDK some developer will write a patch to the widely successful "thumbs-up / thumbs-down" system which is causing us all so much pain.
I for one welcome our new bird flicking Tivo overlords.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
...increases risk of carpal tunnel. Looks like a job for....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Not another one of these cry baby medical conditions. Oh well, maybe it's true.... As long as I can still use my middle finger, I'm ok.
Any repetitive motion that you make with your hands can cause repetitive stress injury. Let the fapping jokes ensue. . . .
All kidding aside - why is this news? You can get RSI from video games, playing violin, playing tennis, computer keyboard, etc.
Doing something over and over again is almost always not good for you.
There are a few exceptions though...
Because there fingers are already crippled by jerking off too much :-)
Soccer superstar over in Europe...you know "Bend in like Beckham" and stuff like that?
my hand should be totally numb and unfunctioning given the amount of Nintendo I grew up playing. Yawn. Move-on.
And here I just ditched my notebook to avoid possible wrist damage and crotch-burn, now you're telling me I need to dump my PDA too?!
Seriously though, it's an issue of being smart about how you use such things. Give your wrist a rest, let your thumbs hang loose every now and then, and take the notebook off your lap before it gets hot enough to impair your child-producing abilities!
I haven't heard of anyone sueing keyboard manufacturers over RSI recently, so a little "Some experts believe that regular use of this device may cause thumb strain" should likely be sufficient.
Your supposed to stop when it hurts? Oh....
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I've never heard of him, what is he famous for?
A. Banging a Spice Girl.
B. Banging a non-Spice Girl.
Because it only has one big button.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Cheggidout:
:-D
1) Sammy at Palm Addict writes "According to the BBC, Regular Blackberry use 'could damage thumbs', experts warn.
2) Trendy handheld Blackberry devices could cause damage to users' thumbs, doctors are warning.
3) But US and UK doctors said repetitive use could cause arthritis or harm tendons in the thumb
If you ever watch Fox News you'll hear them do a lot of this- 5 minutes news spots where they simply say the same thing over and over, but with slight variations in wording. Usually it is all sensational hype with no content or evidence. What's funnier is to hear all the sheeple the next day repeating all of this in the same fashion as if it is fact. Well, it is funny in that horribly frightening sort of way, similar to how meteor jokes would be if they announced that the whole planet was going to be anhillated by a giant asteroid in 20 days....
(i'm not picking on the article poster, btw- The subject of the article is very valid)
Everyone scoff all you want about Repetetetetive Strain Injuries (RSI). It all seems so petty till it happens to you.
do() || do_not();
I had a gameboy for many years. Guess I'm fucked. :)
I thought that we were evolving, what with all the devices that need thumb use. I don't remember where I read it, but I read that the thumb was becoming the dominant digit of the human hand.
This applies to textmessaging, slotmachines, heck: operating the guillotine with thumbs could, in the long run, give you arthritis etc.j ury
Wikipedia has a good link, though I'm afraid that too many of you are already aware of the syndrome:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_in
It might be incorporated in the FAQ: what to do in case of over-/.-ing
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
and the NINTENDO THUMB?
those 8bit nes controllers.. damn. they really suck.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
He's an English Soccer player who is married to an ex-spice girl(posh?). They're stalked like royalty by the English press. He's a talented soccer player and gets a ton of endorsements. You know how those euro's love their "football".
If you think
Just head over to your nearest Chinese herbalist and ask for his best "dit da jow" herb mix.
Let it soak in alcohol, then rub regularly on your affected soft tissues.
I tore my plantar faciae once, and it healed in just abour 3 weeks, compared to the usual 6 months.
I assume that it must work just as well with other tendons and connective tissues.
then i'm sure there would be reports of thumb problems in asia, especially japan, where people compulsively send SMS and emails using their cellphone/joystick. just take a ride in a japanese commuter train - since actually talking on the phone is considered disruptive and a public nuisance, people either text-message or play games on their cellphone.
I think this could definitley be a problem.
I've been using an IBM ThinkPad for a several years, and while I love the little 'pointer stick' type mouse, I've noticed my pointer finger developing 'slop' in between the joints of my finger tip from moving this little nubbin.
My assumption is that the continued use and the pressure that I've used for many long hours of hack sessions has ground away at the bone.
I've since been very concious of using less pressure.
For background -- I'm 26y/o and in good health. I'd imagine older people, whose bones are more brittle, could have even more a problem with repititious actions with devices that were not thought about from a human perspective.
I don't play tennis, if you know what I mean.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
uhh....yes. Do I get a prize?
Seriously though. I love these "could x be harmful?" articles, the answer is always yes. If you do too much of ANYTHING it will be harmful. With that out of the way maybe we can stop jumping up and down and screaming what about the children every time one of these articles comes out...
I've spent a very good portion of my life mashing buttons with my thumbs. I have permanent callouses(sp?) on both my thumbs from the original nes pad, and the dreamcast controller did unimaginable things to my wrists.
That being said, I've never actually had any muscle strain issues with my fingers (they call them fingers, but I never see them fing) when using my treo 600, gba:sp, ngage qd, or even my tetris watch. I could see someone who has never really spent a lifetime typing, gaming, or doing anything that requires dexteriy having issues, but if you've spent any decent (read: 30 hours/week) at a keyboard, gamepad, etc, won't have any issues...
(oh, there they go!).
How Jaded Are You?
By sticking it up your ass...
100% Insightful
I'm a part of a class action lawsuit against the original NES and the game Track and Field.
I still have flashbacks of the 200meter hurdles.
If you think
It is far more painful (and quickly becomes painful at that) for me to try writing an extended amount of anything these days because I typically type almost everything. It is easier and requires less muscle manipulation to type letters and words and symbols using a keyboard than to hold a pencil or pen and actually form the letters, words, and symbols the "old" way. I would say all this repetitive stress injury syndrome crap is due to our increased workloads in Western civilization, not necessarily the fancy new tech gadgets. In the 1800's, one letter could take a week or more to write, send, and get a response to from loved ones or business colleagues. Today it's constant im's, emails, and blackberry messages going back and forth as fast as you can type. Let's face it, today's communication delays are 100% human and have little to do with the technological limits. It took me several minutes to type this crap out, but it takes 0.43 seconds to post it to slashdot. Chill out on the digital communications and you won't injure yourself. Don't chill out and live with the consequences.
I lost my thumbs in an unfortunate smelting accident.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
Somebody should tell these people that gratuitously pointing at the obvious can damage the index finger.
I once kept an Activision Lazerblast game going for a couple of hours. Supposedly, you could "Finish" the game by getting a score of 999,999. I also tryed to complete "Pitfall" on more than one occasion. In each case, it was not my skill in the game that was the limiting factor. It was the fact that my hands got so sweaty I could hardly hold the Atari 2600 joysticks. And my thumbs cramped up from repeatedly pressing the red fire button. Game boys and Blackberries are like Yoga compared to the old 2600 Joystick. Using that thing for 2 hours was a real workout!!!
If you could view pr0n... say with libPr0nLite, then you'd have wr3ck3d wr1sts and thuck3dthumbz.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
Scientists report that riding a steam-train may be detrimental to your health as the unnatural speeds at which it moves might cut off the natural air supply to one's lungs.
No such damage has been reported, but it's too early to tell, so best be careful out there, folks!
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
life itself wears you down
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
First off, why did they decide to single out the blackberry among all phones/pdas?
Secondly, I would like to know the difference between the older blackberry's and the newer 7100 series which uses a kind of predictive text input but on a smaller keypad.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
...mob bosses do.
I don't get it.
You fools! You should have bought Zaurii with cellular modems. Those tiny keyboards are on a Linux-powered device.
I have only to wait for the OZ patch that disables the thumb hurting, and then I'm back to writing my novel in the Hancom Word.
From the related article, "Blackberry device is out of season"
Using it for e-mails is a cinch, thanks to its built-in qwerty keyboard. The keys are on the small size but typing is relatively painless.
He's a wildly famous football player in Britain. [soccer, for us Americans] He's also married to some Spice Girl. The paparazzi love him.
No but p0rn is damaging my palm.
My grandmother played her Intellivision so much that she actually had to have thumb surgery. Yes she had an Intellivision when she was 63 - cool grandma, no? She used to play Astrosmash and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which used the Intellivision's side buttons extensively. (She couldn't remember the name of the D&D game, and always called it 'Gorrilas and Pyramids')
Point is, it's not just the Blackberry. Any repetative thumb action will cause damage.
It reminds me of the "Opti-Grab" glasses from Steve Martin's "The Jerk"...
"Sounds like a great idea, but your eyes are drawn to it... then you wind up cock-eyed!"
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
1) Buy Blackberry
2) Use it
3) *****
4) Visit Doctor
5) PROFIT!!!
In other news, vacation home sales among U.K. doctors are up today. The doctors say this is in no way related to the influx of people worried about their thumbs.
Back in the late 1980s, we called this phenomenon "Nintendo-thumb".
There is no known cure.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Well it will only be a matter of time that tells us that everyone who has been playing video games since Super Mario Brothers will not be able to have any use of our fingers/thumbs/hands in a couple of years... I can't wait!
than using a blackberry. Fewer keys, more strokes. And, there have to be a boatload more of them. Why not look there and then extrapolate for the Blackberry, rather than conjecture on a smaller statistical sample?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
You can literally practice until your fingers bleed (and it doesn't take that long) until you develop calouses. ( a natural solution to the problem. ) Should guitar lessons be outlawed? Have we just not endured the Blackberry long enough for nature to develop a solution to the problem?
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
I don't have a blackberry...
In my case at least, I would consider stylus-based devices as more dangerous than button-based ones, since the former force you to make many small precise strokes with your entire wrist while button-based ones generally involve just the thumbs. I've been using button-based devices like game controllers, cellphones and electronic dictionaries for years with no problems (except the occasional bloody thumb (seriously :)), but a few months of stylus wrecked my arm. I was actually considering buying a Blackberry for ergonomic reasons!
A new report out by the US Department of Agriculture says that people who are living a life are 246 time mroe likely to die.
astounding!
It goes on to say that those working with cinder blocks are prone to damage their hands. Someone should look into filing a lawsuit against whoever came up with cinder blocks
The headline shrieks: "Blackberry use 'can damage thumb'"
The true fact of the matter, further down: "He said he had not heard of any cases to date however."
What is really interesting here is that Blackberry brand has attained the kind of status in the collecive mindshare, vis-a-vis IPod, where there is a certain excitement around the product. This brings a lot of hype, but sadly it also brings a lot of junk articles like this one.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Blackberry: Used a couple times a day to send short messages
Hmmm... don't you think any potential problems would show up a lot sooner with game console users???
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Regular use of keyboards could damage the wrists. Oh, wait...
As an acredited member of the Royal Academy of Whatchamacalit, I object to your public insults against me and my robed fellows. Now, if you were referring to the Royal Academy of Doohickey I would concur, for they are indeed a bunch of pontificating rabble.
I remain,
Sir Johnathan Gregory Pinchwith-Smythe
Assistant Chief Pontificator
Royal Academy of Whatchamacalit
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
He's the most famous athlete in the world. (yes, more than Jordan) That said, he sucks. (yes, that's an opinion)
... is my street cred. Because I don't have one. :(
It takes an idiot to do cool things - that's why it's cool!
what were they doing with blackberries?
Personally I prefer to eat blackberries and drink blackberry wine. You'd have to pick a lot of blackberries to get sore thumbs.
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Japanese school girls text on their cells a hundred times more than any blackberry user (Remember, to them it is their social life. ). I'd be more interested in hearing about japan.
At least you don't play viola... I hope it clears up for you. My wife's a violinist, and fortunately, she's never had any hand problems.
I used to play violin. It's got to be one of the most awkward positions to hold something in.
As we know, Qwerty layouts were not well-optimized for their defined use, let alone two-thumb typing. The Dvorak layout may provide some benefit for thumb-typists, but it has been designed for four fingers (and 1-2 thumbs), not a two-thumbs application.
IMO, there needs to be some serious study on two-thumb key layouts for portable devices, to produce several efficient and usable key layouts for such devices. Ideally, a better layout would minimize excessive thumb motion, take advantage of thumb alternation, and place common letters in easy-to-reach locations, and be generally more ergonomic. We've seen more than a few examples of this in the world of desktop keyboards and on-screen keyboards, but this needs to be applied to thumbs.
I'm certainly no expert - I learned Dvorak and studied other alternative layouts - but I managed to come up with a few two-thumb layouts in my spare time. One is loosely based on Dvorak, and another comes closer. I haven't yet published these anywhere, but I can if there's interest.
Has anyone taken the time to design a new layout? I'd be curious to see any ideas.
Super ninja monkeys will one day rule the world!
But what's 200 pounds in dollars? Not every Slashdotter is from England you know...
the sky is falling.
Love,
Chicken Little
Not only do you get sore thumbs, but your wrists get sore too, well one of them anyway. Repeated use can lead to blindness and give you a lot of zits also.
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This news is old by about 17 years. Back in the era of the "nintendo entertainment system", and the "sega mastersystem", they had square controllers... before the days of truly ergonomic controllers (the sega mega-drive (genesis) was the first). Excessive use of these controllers brought on what was coined as "nintendo thumb". Partially because the square box jammed a corner into your thumb, but it seems to be pretty much the same thing.
lol I know I'm not the only one who thought 'Blackberry' meant the real berry, but was I the only one thinking 'thumbs' meant the small pictures?
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
Unfortunately I know how painful de Quervain's tenosynovitis is, because I suffer from it in my right thumb. I used to use a Logitech trackball instead of a mouse, and it was fine for 5 or more years. It still is fine to whizz that ball around with the affected thumb. I suspect the damage was actually done when I used to carry 4 or 5 DLT's back and forth from server room to office. A DLT is just wide enough to strain my thumb when held by the edges. When I started to strip paint and wallpaper off the walls at home to prepare for decorating, I started to suffer the pain. I guess I had been straining that thumb already, and the additional pressure from using the shaving hooks just inflamed the tendons.
I no longer handle DLTs in that way! I'm too old to want to spend all my time thumbing away at a cell/mobile phone or a Blackberry, too. And I no longer spend hours stripping paint off walls. The pain, however, remains, and only cortisone injections relieve it for a few months at a time. As they hurt like hell for a few days afterwards, I don't want to do that anymore.
Anyone got any other remedies they can recommend? Other than amputation or rectal insertion!
I've got a Blackberry 6280, and when I put this thing anywhere near an amplified speaker (speaker phone, guitar amplifier, restaurant stereo), if there is any communication, you hear it loud and clear. Email coming in? BAAAHHT-BAT-BAT-BADDA-BADDA-BAAHHHHHT-BAT-BAAAHT-B ADDA (etc). Can't be good for my boys.
The bad? Someone on the other end of the phone has theirs next to the speaker phone and blasts your ears while you're talking to them.
The good? Its almost a prank that Steve Wozniak would be proud of. There is one particular restaurant that I to go for lunch sometimes that you can sit at a table that has the house stereo behind it. Put the blackberry on one end of the table, and the stereo blasts that sound into the restaurant, take it away and the stereo is fine. Now just screw with the waiters as they try to figure out why the stereo keeps making that sound.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Yes, yes, it is clear that they are talking about hypotheticals here, but what we should take away from this is (from article):
A) given the choice, text on a cell phone, rather than a Blackberry
B) limit messages to 50 words or less
-Tut
Health-Hack.com