Beware 'mobile elbow', sawbones warn

Doctors have warned that excessive yacking on the mobile can result in "cubital tunnel syndrome", aka "mobile elbow", which could leave you too feeble open a jar of Marmite. That's because if you have your phone glued to your ear for extended periods, keeping your elbow bent can overstretch and damage the arm's ulnar nerve. …

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes me wonder

Haven't they heard of handsfree kits?

[Anonymous Coward]

"extends underneath the funny bone and controls ring and little finger"

Can you dumb it down just a little bit more, Doctor?

[Hans]

loadsawankers

Funny how it, according to this article, only affects mobile phone users.

I'll continue blathering away all day on my fixed phone then.

erm . . . maybe I could just recommend some kind of exercise to restore the blood circulation in that one arm eh?

Purely in the interests of good health and well being, you understand.

[Nathan Dennis]

new era of evolution

I was almost worried about the blood not flowing through the nerves until I remembered that blood flows through arterties and viens and there associated structures.

Most IT workers are screwed neuoroligically thanks to spending all day hunched over a keyboard rolling the shoulders forward and sticking the chin out. The mobile use is the icing on the cake of injury.

Paris - she's an anatomical expert

[JasonW]

Nerves??

Nerves are part of the circulatory system now? When did that change?

Blood doesn't "flow through the nerves" - Science has known that for centuries, why doesn't the Torygraph? and much more importantly why doesn't Dr. Leon Benson?

[Muscleguy]

An Anatomist writes:

The ulnar nerve runs under the olecranon of the ulna and innervates the flexor muscles of digits IV and V.

How's that?

[Cameron Colley]

Hands-Free kits?

If you're going to be on the phone, whether fixed-line or mobile, for more than a few minutes at a time a few times a day then surely you should be using a hands-free kit anyhow -- or are there people who spend their days doing everything one-handed?

[Graham Marsden]

@Muscleguy

I think you mean:

The finger bone's connected to the hand bone,

The hand bone's connected to the wrist bone,

The wrist bone's connected to the elbow bone

And the Elbow bone's connected to the shoulder bone...

[Muscleguy]

Nope I mean

The phalange has a bearing surface with the metacarpal

The metacarpal has a bearing surface with the the carpal

The carpal has a bearing surface with the ulna

In addition if the ulna has a bearing surface with the scapula or the clavicle your mother had taken thalydomide and you have phocomelia. The ulna properly has a bearing surface with the humerus which has bearing surfaces with the acromium process of the scapula and the clavicle.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason why it only affects mobile users

It's because you don't sit with your regular landline hooked to your ear all day and all night like twats who can't shut the fuck up for a minute do with mobiles.

Before you say what about operators, call centers and such, if you've ever worked in such a place you'd know people who work on the telephone all day use headsets in order to prevent neck problems - which mobile users probably also have but because so many people have neck and middle/upper back problems these days no one notices or blames the mobile. Same as people who work every day with computers don't seem to understand that sitting with bad posture for decades is the reason they have pain around or below one of their shoulder blades and perhaps in the area of their middle back just above the kidneys. That one takes months just to fix the curvature they put into their spine, let alone do something to alleviate the stress and pain on their ligaments or arthritis in their rib cage.

[Tommy Pock]

With these comments

I feel as if I'm being browbeaten into stupidity with one hand, while receiving the soothing massage of education with the other. It's like listening to Big Brother on Radio 3.

[David]

Hands-free

Agree with Anonymous Coward. Hands-free is the way to go but then you wouldn't be able to actually see the latest line in phones that our sufferer is posing with. Have a vague suspicion that some folk think it's pansy-ish or soppy to use a hands-free unit. Hence the large number of drivers still hand-holding the damn things.