If you’re an avid video gamer, you often feel a thumb ache while or after video-game bingeing. And because you take each play as seriously, most of the time you just can’t help but ignore it until it becomes too painful that you can’t even grip a game console, hold a joystick, or press a button or key anymore.
De Quervain’s Stenosing Tenosynovitis is Gamer’s thumb to console, PC, and mobile gamers, and is an inflammation of the fibrous sheath that wraps the tendons that move your thumb — the abductor pollicis longus and extensor pollicis brevis. Repetitive strain on your thumb causes these tendons to rub against each other and become irritated until the sheath is thickened, leading to pain and inflammation. It’s a common cause of thumb pain in gaming but may also occur in other situations that involve repetitive gripping, grasping, clenching, or twisting of the wrists, which may include:
If you try to place your thumb across your palm, fold your fingers into a fist, and then move your wrist towards your pinky, and you have thumb pain, then you’re likely to have a Gamer’s Thumb — this is the Finkelstein Test. The common symptoms are:
A Life’s Opportunity Lost…
These days, many young individuals find it hard to tear themselves away from video games as many of them have already built a life out of video gaming, and the last thing on their minds is losing not in the game but in having the opportunity that these video games can offer them due to injuries and more so from as little as a thumb pain.
Take the case of Call‑of‑Duty gamer Thomas “The ZooMaa” Paparatto of the New York Subliners who has struggled with the thumb injury which even required surgery to alleviate the pain. Not only that his thumb pain has caused him stress and anxiety while playing through it but also forced him to retire at the young age of 25.
But still life full of options and possibilities…
And as young as he still is with full of ambitions and a never-say-die attitude, he always looks forward to seeing opportunities where he can utilize his abilities and still engage in the game that he has played with and put his “heart and soul into every single day for eight years long years,” and takes this situation as "one door closing and another one opening," Thomas says in Twitter.
If you’re already dealing with thumb pain, there a few fixes that you can go about fixing a Gamer’s Thumb. But first of all, as an immediate remedy for a swollen thumb, you may apply the RICE protocol (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) and then follow the following:
It’s pretty hard to restrain yourself from doing the things that you love doing just because of thumb pain, especially if this gives you the life that you’re happy living with and have been wanting since. Here, we give you insights on how Recovapro can help you recover from thumb pain.
Recovapro is an innovative tool that provides therapeutic vibration signals that can stimulate the healing and recovery process once you’ve got yourself an injury like thumb pain. If you’re like Thomas who has undergone surgery, Recovapro, first of all, can alleviate the post‑surgical pain that you may have – by flushing out the pain substances through increased blood flow and light massaging effect. The vibratory signals received by the healing tissues can prevent or minimize the development of scar tissues, which can cause adhesions, stiffness, and pain by preventing its formation right from the start, or breaking the already formed ones while realigning the newly forming tissues. Vibration therapy can stimulate the growth of collagen tendon tissues, which fill up the gaps caused by the damage.