All those selfies you’ve been taking may turn out to be a real pain in the arm.
Recently, Today journalist Hoda Kotb began openly complaining about an achy elbow. When the 51-year-old went to a doctor to see what was up, she found out the pain was due to her constant selfie-taking.
“I went to the orthopedist and he said, ‘Are you playing tennis or ping-pong?’ And of course I’m not, so I told him I was taking selfies,” she explained to Elle.com. “When you take the picture, your arm is up, bent in a weird way and you just click, click, click — think about how many you take: 20, 30, or 40. Selfie elbow, everyone has it!”
READ MORE: Here’s why you shouldn’t peer at your smartphone in the dark with one eye closed
The injury is just the latest in a long line of well-documented tech injuries that we humans now have to put up with as a result of our smartphone obsession. There’s text claw, iPad hand and even tendinitis of the thumbs.
So what exactly is “selfie elbow”? Apparently, it’s a whole lot like tennis elbow.
According to Mary Ann Wilmarth, a doctor of physical therapy and spokeswoman for the American Physical Therapy Association, the condition is caused by repetitive strain and inflammation of the tendons that run from the hand to the elbow. Speaking to The Washington Post, she went on to say it “happens because you’re extending your arm, but also trying to keep a firm grip on your phone.”
READ MORE: 4 ways your digital gadgets are ruining your body
Dr. Jordan Metzl, a sports medicine physician at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery, took the description one step further in an interview with Elle.com.
“Basically, the interface between technology and the human body sometimes causes injuries of over-exuberance,” he said. “What that means is you do something, you do it a lot, then stuff starts to hurt. We used to see it with BlackBerry phones – it was a real thing. People would get tendinitis in their thumb because they were on their BlackBerries all the time. You get tennis elbow from playing too much tennis – or having poor form – and you get selfie elbow from taking too many selfies. You put too much stress on the muscle and it irritates the area where the muscle comes off the bone and you get this inflammatory response.”
While the condition is common in adults, it’s popping up more frequently in teens who spend scant moments away from their smartphones.
READ MORE: How digital gadgets ruin your hand health
Whether the pain is enough to coerce folks to put down their phones on occasion is up for debate. Kotb says it won’t impact what she shares on Instagram.
“I’m not going to stop taking selfies! But now I prop it with my left arm to help alleviate some of the pressure… When my elbow is ultra-sore, I ask someone else to take the selfie. When it starts to feel better, I start taking them again!”
Other treatment options include icing the inflamed portion of the arm, using a selfie stick to take snaps and, the most obvious, laying off selfies for a while.
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