Prolonged use of his phone wasn’t so smart when it came to nerve pain

MOBILE phones were supposed to make our lives better, and in many ways they have.

You can contact your family, order a meal or even read The Sunday Post (how’s that for self-promotion?) at the touch of a button.

But for all the positives there are often niggling negatives.

A patient visited me last week with a problematic sensation. It was, as he described, like the pain of being hit on the funny bone.

This shooting, tingling sensation we feel actually comes from our ulnar nerve being annoyed and not the bone at all.

The ulnar nerve runs down a groove on the inner side of your elbow, where it is relatively unprotected, and passes through a wee ligament passage called the cubital tunnel.

The feeling in the little finger and part of the ring finger, and some of the movement in your hand is the work of your ulnar nerve.

In cubital tunnel syndrome the nerve becomes irritated due to pressure or pulling on the nerve. Usually this is down to overuse.

Sometimes office workers have it due to leaning on an elbow, or manual labourers can develop it, especially if they’re carrying out some other repetitive movement.

My patient’s condition was caused by him holding his arm crooked for long periods in order to read his mobile phone.

That was the cause of the tingling and numbness in his little finger and hand.

If it carries on the muscles can waste a little, and the little fingers can form a “claw”.

I advised him to avoid doing the activity which irritated the nerve – so no more long mobile phone sessions for a while.

Wearing a splint at night can help, and for more severe cases, there’s surgery to give the nerve some room.