I'm old. Five days ago suddenly my right thumb felt sore. Like if you're young and you play flag football and the next day you thumb is sore. But you're young and in a day or so - the pain is gone. But in my case there wasn't even an event like flag football. The soreness came out of nowhere.
As the days passed - it was getting better but today it started to hurt a bit again. For you youngsters - aches and pains become less of an idiom an more of an annoyance as you age. To put my mind at rest I googled "thumb arthritis". I figured that's not what I have but I should google to be informed. My mind is the opposite of being at rest.
Thumb Arthritis > Fact Sheets > Yale Medicine
“Thumb arthritis is unbelievably common, and if we look at the X-rays of people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s, 30 to 50 percent of that population can have it,” Dr. Luo says. “But not everyone will have symptoms that are severe enough to require any treatment.”
Well at least the following made me laugh. Evolution can be like a tech bro.
Xuan Luo, MD, a Yale Medicine hand, shoulder, and elbow surgeon, draws from evolutionary history when he explains thumb arthritis to patients.
“If you look at certain ancestors of ours, not all of them had opposable thumbs [meaning they can be placed opposite the fingers, which is what allows us to grasp objects]. This is a relatively new evolutionary invention,” Dr. Luo says. “And like any new feature on your car or computer, it’s not always tested well and tends to wear out first. As we get older, that CMC joint in particular often wears out, causing pain at the base of the thumb.”
What wears it out? Heavy gripping? Making it pop(click)? Over stretching?
I expect adopting certain self-preservatory lifestyle habits could mitigate it, but understanding what precisely causes the wear is necessary to know what specific activities to try to reduce.