As a Sports Therapist we obviously see lots of Sports Injuries coming through our doors. But we’re also seeing an increasing number of injuries related to modern living. Instead of these gadgets making our lives easier they end up leaving us grumpy and in pain.
Here are the most common conditions we’ve seen this year:
This condition is caused by over-using the muscles that extend the thumb when swiping a smartphone screen, causing strain on the tendons of the thumb and potential irritation of the radial nerve. The technical name is tenosynovitis of pollicis tendons or De Quervain’s syndrome.
This condition occurs when a tablet is held away from the torso with both arms so that the user can view the screen. Holding anything statically for any length of time can lead to what’s known as adaptive shortening – if you put a muscles in a shortened position for a length of time it thinks it should stay there. With a tablet in hand this can affect biceps and muscles around the shoulder. All of which increase your likelihood of developing an RSI type condition in the shoulder, elbow or wrist.
This condition is caused by poor posture when sitting at a desktop computer; slouching forward for a prolonged period of time means the muscles between the shoulder blades have too much work to do leading to pain and stiffness in the upper back, neck and shoulders.
Constant repetitive use of a computer mouse can over-use the muscles that extend the wrist. Not only affecting the tendon of the index finger but potentially the wrist and forearm too. This can lead to nerve irritation and repetitive strain injury.
We generally have to look downwards to a laptop. The muscle that does this is called sternocledionmastoid. This will become short and tight with prolonged laptop usage – looking down to the screen. This shortening of muscles means the muscles that oppose this movement also have more work to do. These are the muscles that run from the neck to the shoulders and these are the ones that normally scream the loudest when they’re not happy.
Lying horizontal and propping up your head with pillows can lead to the same problem as laptop neck. Effectively you are looking down for long periods. If you’re using too many pillows this can be very severe. Especially if you’re reading a good book and you don’t notice.
People are just as good at adopting poor posture standing up as they are sitting down. Most people will put more weight through one leg or the other which then puts the pelvis in an imbalanced position which then leads to muscle tightening on one side of the pelvis more than the other which can lead to pain.
FBCD is caused by doing too much activity too soon, to keep your fit bit happy without allowing your body time to adapt. So many people go from doing next to nothing to doing 10k steps a day. If you don’t allow your muscles time to recover, they tire out quicker and stay tighter for longer potentially leading to pains in areas of your body. Most commonly knees, ankles and shins.
You’re about to win the Champions League on FIFA 2017 and you’re giving it everything you’ve got. Chances are that you’re gritting your teeth and tensing your shoulders each time you go in for a tackle. Do that for a few hours and you’ve got some seriously negative overuse movement patterns going on. We most frequently see this in adolescent boys or adult men who just haven’t grown up.
This condition is caused by resting your elbows on a desk for too long. To a lesser degree this can lead to over sensitised elbows. Which is annoying but not major. In the extremethis may lead to irritation of a bursa – which is the fluid filled sack that helps the skin glide over bony point of elbow. You can’t miss this one if you get it as your elbow will look like it’s had a tennis ball stuck onto the end of it.
The good news is you can prevent these injuries by being more aware of your posture when using digital gadgets and making some changes to your lifestyle. Read on for physio advice and pilates exercises so you don’t become beset with one of the new breed of tech-related injury.