
Me and My Numb Thumb: A Tale of Tech, Texts and Tendons - erickhill
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/technology/smartphone-overuse-numb-thumb.html
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davidscolgan
A few things I started early in my career that may or may not have helped me
avoid finger problems but I figure certainly didn't hurt:

1\. Rearrange a few select keys - Backspace goes on Capslock, Ctrl goes on
Alt, Alt goes on Windows key, Windows key goes on Ctrl.

Doing this allows me to hit Ctrl with my thumb instead of my pinky with way
less wrist rotation. Alt can then still be hit with my thumb with a short
reach. Backspace doesn't require completely extending my whole right hand.

2\. Switching to the Dvorak keyboard layout. While claims that Dvorak is
faster than Qwerty are dubious, I think it's fairly clear that there is less
finger movement with Dvorak. My fingers stay much more on the home row.

3\. Using Vim. The above combined with remapping Escape to something not in
the far upper left corner means I do very little weird hand contortions at all
when coding. But, with Ctrl on Alt, any IDE requires much less wrist movement.

Yes my keyboard is completely weird and my editor incomprehensible to anyone
else, but my hands are super comfy. For an 80/20 optimization, just
rearranging Backspace, Ctrl, and Alt might save you the worst of wrist damage.
On Windows a simple AutoHotKey script can do it.

~~~
mikekchar
Interesting. I have a Japanese keyboard that has a very short space bar. On
either side of the space bar are keys dealing with Japanese input. I've mapped
those to tab and I've mapped the tab key to escape. I've really grown used to
it and I pretty much can't use a normal keyboard any more.

~~~
davidscolgan
In general the thumb is very under-utilized on the keyboard but also the
strongest finger. Any use of the keys beside the spacebar is a win in my mind.
Alt is used so infrequently compared to most of the other modifiers.

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nanomonkey
My thumb and pointer finger went numb a year ago. For me, I'm pretty sure that
most of the cause was due to problems in my shoulder, and not the hand itself.
It's worth noting that strain on your neck and shoulder can cause "pinched
nerves" which will result in numbness in your extremities.

Acupuncture, regular breaks away from the computer and exercise fixed my
issues.

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erickhill
This past weekend on Saturday morning I woke up with a numb right thumb from
the finger tip to the first joint. It's a sensation very similar to when your
foot falls asleep. The skin feels sort of "dumb" or almost swollen but not
entirely without feeling. Like it has been filled with sand.

During the course of the day, it will sometimes shift to a more pin-prick
feeling. Touching things - forks, pens, my phone, the keyboard right now -
feels really "icky" and sometimes even hurts. And now at times it'll have a
hot flash as if it were setting on fire.

I got a wrist brace shipped to me on Tuesday. I've not noticed any perceptible
change.

I'm going to see the doctor on Monday. One thing I have learned is to not
Google "numb thumb". You wind up on sites offering the worst possible
theories, and none of them help your stress level or mood.

I hope this doesn't mean surgery, but I do wonder.

This article hit me hard when I stumbled across it. "At least I'm not alone,"
was the first thought that hit me.

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vemv
I've always held my phone with one hand, and typed with the index of the
other. Granny style.

I doubt the thumb finger evolved to perform high-precision tasks. The index
finger did.

Anyway today's huge smartphone screens would force to contort and stretch the
thumb in obviously unnatural ways.

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okmokmz
It's interesting, in a purely personal way, that this article was posted
today. I've used computers and other tech daily since childhood and never had
issues with wrist/hand/arm/finger pain or numbness. However, over the past few
weeks I have been experiencing wrist and forearm pain at night, and today is
the first day I've experienced it early in the day. I just purchased some
wrist braces on amazon because I've read that they can help. Any other
solutions that people recommend for similar issues?

~~~
tlarkworthy
Split keyboard, vertical mouse. See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17888557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17888557)

~~~
distances
I've been very happy with MS Sculpt keyboard. It's even relatively
inexpensive. I just hope it'd be a normal USB model as I don't really get why
a keyboard should ve cordless.

I've also used the later model, MS Surface Ergonomic, and it's one of the
worst keyboards I've had the displeasure to use. YMMV.

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zaphod12
Value and care for your hands. You can have troubles you never see coming.

I developed Emacs-Pinky (though actually from writing a butt-ton of PHP, not
using emacs), though I didn't know it had a name at the time. My Hand surgeon
couldn't believe I didn't injure myself through a trauma. It's really been a
challenge for my career since then. Tried moving to python and it's helped
some, but now that I've started down the bad path, Enter keys and everything
else are issues.

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trowawee
I started to develop similar issues when I moved from the iPhone 5 to the 7
Plus. I sold that and got the 8 the next year, and I started using Popsockets
and swapping hands and fingers more frequently, but I still have some numbness
and pain in my right thumb joint. I really wish phones had stuck around the
iPhone 4/5 screen size - even with fairly large hands, that felt just about
perfect.

~~~
nicolashahn
When I got a larger phone for the first time, I noticed it was finally
comfortable enough to type with both thumbs in portrait mode. Previously I'd
always type one handed. My WPM shot up and strain went down.

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silencio
i have de quervain's tenosynovitis from lifting my 95th+ percentile weight
toddler. the difference between the article's author and my experiences are
night and day. nobody ever gave me a lecture about tech addiction, despite
also having my phone at hand 24/7\. they just told me to suffer through it and
try to lift my toddler less when possible. ha. it's common enough that it's
often referenced as "mommy thumb".

outside of the lectures and minor lifestyle changes to reduce strain, there
are absolutely medical options for treatment, even if your doctor doesn't want
to discuss them.

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NeoBasilisk
I've had large parts of my feet numb for over 7 years and parts of my right
hand numb for about 2.5 years. Doctors were never any help.

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danjc
If you must use your phone to do that amount of typing, I wonder if a swipe
keyboard would be better.

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OisinMoran
Might as well share my story here in the hopes that it might be of use to
someone else. Apologies for the length.

At the start of summer 2016 my phone screen broke, causing the bottom line on
the keyboard to go black. This obviously led to a lot of mistakes which led to
a lot of backspacing, and all this backspacing was done with my right thumb.
It soon became quite sore, so I tried to even things out a bit, but then the
same thing happened to my left thumb. I was solo-travelling up the west coast
of the US at this point (I think it started/got very bad in Seattle) and when
I made it to my friend in Vancouver I think it may have gotten a bit better
from not using my phone as much. When I arrived home I sensibly topped it all
off by, on my laptop, typing up every single one of my notes from the previous
six years.

It then got so bad I would not want to put away the groceries and even holding
a book was sore. The doctor was not particularly helpful, she even just
literally Googled stuff in front of me and then printed out one of the
pages... But she did prescribe some gel to apply on my hands that also didn't
seem to have any effect. Your mileage my absolutely vary here though, but I
would reckon that a Physiotherapist would be a better bet than a doctor
(although you might as well go to both).

I was incredibly worried that I would not be able to complete the final year
left in my degree. From sculpting to programming my hands were crucial to my
being. So it was obviously quite distressing when they weren't functioning as
intended.

Two years on though and I can say things have dramatically improved. While my
hands are still not back to their former glory, they are not holding me back
in any way. I finished my degree, got a paper into NIPS, and am now working
very hard as the first engineer at Inscribe (YC S18) so there's nothing to
fear.

Things I've tried that helped:

Minimizing phone usage as much as possible: If it can be done on a computer
instead, do it on a computer.

Taking breaks

Minimizing mouse usage as much as possible: mainly done by using Vimium [0]
and other keyboard shortcuts, but doing so is only good if you have an...

Ergonomic keyboard: I use the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard [1] and find
that the keyboard is great, but the mouse doesn't really help that much. A
Kinesis keyboard might be even better but I have yet to try one.

A spiky yoga ball thing: Mine looks like [2] and is good for massaging my
hands or forearms if they get sore.

Running my hands through the hot & cold taps can be nice the odd time for some
relief.

There are also some other great suggestions in the comments

Things that I've tried that were probably not necessary/overkill:

Hot & ice water: I used to spend about and hour or two a day alternately
soaking my hands in buckets of ice water and hot water. After I stopped I did
not really notice any change, except in the rate I got through podcasts.

Avoiding anything using my hands: for a while I avoided the gym and anything
using my hands, and this may have been warranted at the worst period, but
after that I found that working out seemed to help a little bit, and even it
didn't it's unhealthy not to. Deadlifts are very different from texting so I
wouldn't worry too much about that.

Things I haven't tried that may help:

A wrist brace

Wristbands

Other points:

Cold definitely makes it worse: I remember one time in particular during my
final year project where I had to program a drone outside in the middle of
winter on my unergonomic laptop keyboard. Not fun.

This situation has massively heightened my sense for bad ergonomics. And in
doing so, completely changed how I look at the design of technology, and a lot
of common assumptions of technology in general. While I used to think the
Apple keyboard was beautiful I now only consider its form aesthetic, while its
function, and the object as a tool, is far from it. I care much less about a
lot of the advancements in phones because I want to use mine as little as
possible. And the startup trope of an office of people coding on couches,
hunched over their laptops is now almost terrifying.

It's also amazing to note the sheer level of addiction a phone can create.
Even though it is painful and I know it is, I still find it hard not to flick
through stuff in the morning.

If anyone wants to talk more about this, my email is in my bio.

[0]
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb?hl=en)

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-
us/products/keyboar...](https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/en-
us/products/keyboards/sculpt-ergonomic-desktop/l5v-00001)

[2]
[https://image.dhgate.com/0x0/f2/albu/g5/M00/DB/D9/rBVaI1lklx...](https://image.dhgate.com/0x0/f2/albu/g5/M00/DB/D9/rBVaI1lklxSAAxycAAIrAaOeVAg243.jpg)

EDIT: Another great way to avoid texting is to send voice messages or even
better just call. But obviously these are not always possible.

