Pain near base of thumb/wrist

[OlympicMtnBoy]

Am I just getting old? Do I already have arthritis?

 

I have a infrequent but recurring pain at the joint near my wrist crease where the big muscle under my thumb/palm ends. It hurts when I try to twist off a jar lid or in some hand jams. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with activity though (hurts right now and I've been largely inactive for several days, no climbing or anything). Seems like I go a month or more and then it flares up randomly.

 

Any suggestions? I only have crappy individual health insurance and no local doctor but it's more of a chronic annoyance than an acute problem so far.

[mountainmatt]

Sorry to hear that Stewart!

 

There surely could be lots of potential reasons, but one worth looking into is a ganglion cyst. I have had these on my wrist before, and depending where they form, they can produce infrequent/recurring pain. Sometimes the cyst would be big enough to feel (like a pea or a grape under the skin) and other times they are fairly small and unnoticeable. However, they can cause pain similar to what you are describing even if they are very small.

 

If they are larger, you can try the old house hold remedy of hitting it really hard with a bible (hence the name bible cyst), or they do sometimes just go away. In most cases, I have let them go away, but in one case I had surgery to remove one near my fingers.

 

 

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/ganglion_cyst/article_em.htm

 

"Ganglion cysts most commonly occur on the back of the hand (60%-70%), at the wrist joint, and can also develop on the palm side of the wrist."

[BirdDog]

OMB - Sorry to be bearer of bad news - I have the exact same issue as you, along with a ganglion cycst. Went to the Doc a week ago, got an x-ray and the diagnosis is arthtitis and bone spurs. Doc says quite common is guys over 50 who have done lots of manual work; I was a carpenter for years. The cyst I have is pretty big, caused by fluid leaking from the FUBR'd joint; I'll probably have surgery. Doc says bone spurs probably causing most of the pain. Arthritis is only in one joint, not systemic, I guess that's good. Doc said to keep from doing movements that bend thumb towards wrist (like taking top of a jar) and probably be tolerable for some time. Rock climbing OK, except for thumb down jamming; which I always sucked at anyways; now I have a great excuse. Next time I do classic crack I'll aid the fucker! Good Luck!

[tvashtarkatena]

Stewart,

 

I now offer discount surgery services for the New Economy. I can have that forearm off for ya in half an hour, and all you need to bring is a rack of offsets to cover the bill.

 

You gotta get better, cuz I sure as hell ain't gonna play rope gun.

[billcoe]

I had the same thing and it was disturbing enough that I went to the Dr.. I normally don't go there unless I have a bone sticking out of my body or I need more than 2 stitches. Dr looks at it, asks if it was in the joint.. it was close so I pointed to the location. He says "Arthritis".

 

Another over 50 and former Concrete construction foreman here and have done a bit of other manual labor, but have been working in an office for over 18 years....so climbing and a few rental homes have been it.... I'm all like,..."shit"....Doc says that if it is very bothersome they can hit it with a cortizone shot which can give temporary relief etc etc ...BUZZZ! uhhh, "no" I reply. I knew I had arthritis from the noticeable lumps in my finger joints and they give me trouble when climbing but generally they don't hurt that bad. However, the thumb is constant and hurts worse so we discuss my concern that it might be cancer and he xrays it anyway to make me quit whining.

 

Nothing in the xray looks like cancer when it is checked later. Dr says to use large grip things. I search the net. The Mayo clinic, home all the scientific method and all good knowledge is all blah blah blah trying to cover up their stupidity and ignorance buy explaining WHAT is it when they don't have a clue as to the WHY it is but if you search around in disbelieving astonishment about this the site pretty much says there isn't shit you can do about it short of using big handled forks spoons and devices for old arthritic folks. From my take on it, they don't have a fucking clue or know what causes this common malady. Maybe they do and they don't want to publish it. See for yourself. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/rheumatoid-arthritis/DS00020

 

Here's where it gets real interesting. I'm seeing John Friehs recommendation to check out the zone diet and Johns a smart square up fella so I do. At this point I'm only thinking of shrinking the man boobs so my wife quits makin' fun of me when I peel the shirt off...I know I'll never get another invitation to be a nude dancer like when I was young, but no reason to look disgusting. Right? Maybe I'll be able to pull a couple grades harder too. Dude in the book has it down and goes on about how eating incorrectly causes inflammation and food is like the most powerful medicine and if you screw the pooch you'll get diabetes blah blah and so I read teh whole book and try it out. John nailed the advice. I drop 20 lbs in a short time frame by eating correctly without even trying (all the time putting on muscle while working out), this is something I'd never been able to do all my life.

 

Christmas comes along with family and friends and between that the the wife bitching on the grease in the fan from the olive oil smoke cooking off the stir fry, I stop the zone. When I go back to work, having forgotten about the zone. Simultaneously to assuage the am hunger I start swinging into either a Mcdonalds OR a Burger King on the way to work and having a Breakfast sandwich nosh to take care of the cravings for food that I didn't have during the zone eating pattern. That's when the pain in my lower thumb comes back. Until then I'd never noticed that the pain was gone! I only ate the fast food breakfasts for 1 week, didn't overeat them, and so I immediately stopped. Pain went away with in days. Days.

 

Hope you followed that sequence. It was diet that brought it to me (unknowingly) and diet that made it go away (again unknowingly) and diet that brought it back (still unknowingly and how friggan clueless is that!?) and when I stopped with the breakfast crap (I do oatmeal now) it went away and I finally saw what had occurred and figured out the rest. That's all I know. I'm sitting here eating a pizza my wife cooked, thinking I need to re-check out the zone diet.

 

So the summation is this. 1st) get yer ass to a Dr.. Have her confirm the internet diagnosis and assumptions of people who have to abbreviate Dr. as they are too stupid to spell it out and furthermore have never even met you. Would you not feel dumb if you later found out it wasn't in your joint at all and that YOU really had cancer? If it's not cancer the Doc says the A word, do some internet research about Arthritis. Share what you learn here. I really don't know shit about it. Which is, as it turns out, more than the most vaunted scientific medical group in the world is willing to admit. I know more than they do apparently.

 

Then look at your diet and experiment with changing it. Maybe start with the zone as it worked for me. If you don't get results, try something else.

 

Good luck!

[genepires]

along the same lines with inflamation, Mark Sisson has been doing some newsletter stuff on inflammation. 6 foods to reduce inflammation.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/top-6-anti-inflammatory-foods/#axzz1kd9PA7L5

If if doesn't help with your joint, it will help with just being healthy anyway.

 

best of luck Stew,

[OlympicMtnBoy]

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I have a bit more reading to do. Of course I woke up this morning and it felt a little sore, but by mid day I had totally forgotten about it and it feels fine now.

 

So far it hasn't really affected anything but it bothers me enough once in a while to want to figure it out.

 

Oh and I'm 31 and have mainly been employed behind a computer (although that's had it's own hand and back issues but not lately). There are some things I could improve diet wise if I thought about it although my twice yearly fast food meals are probably not to blame. :-)

 

I'll post again if I figure anything out.

[Bronco]

Had these symptoms start in November in both thumbs, nice to see diet may be effective in controlling it. I'm 42 and have done a lot of manual labor, suspect 5 years of running chainsaws nearly daily had something to do with it. I'll have to check out the zone diet and skip the fast food. Been eating it 2 or 3 times a week lately.

 

Any of you guys have an update on diets effectiveness on treating this condition?

 

This is very interesting, especially the last bullet: http://www.arthritis.org/illinois/anti-inflammatory-diet/

 

Haven't been paying real close attention to my weight the last couple of years and could stand to lose a few pounds.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Bronco