4 Reasons Your Thumb Pain Keeps Coming Back When You Knit and Crochet
I'm going to tell you something most doctors won't, and many of them won't thank me for it.
Read on to find the likely culprits behind your thumb pain, and what helped thousands of women pursue their passion.
1. The Splints, Gloves, and Creams You've Already Tried Were Never Designed For Knitters
It isn't that nothing works. It's that nothing you tried was made for knitters.
Compression gloves. A rigid thumb splint your doctor swore by. CBD rub. Maybe a "brace" off Amazon that broke at the seam in a week, or cortisone shots that bought you six weeks the first time.
My patients had told me how they bought so many different types of braces over the years, all not designed for knitters. Every one built by someone who's never picked up a needle. None of them let me knit in them.
2. The Real Problem Is the Joint at the Base of Your Thumb
Here is what I check for first, and what almost no one has ever shown you.
It's one joint: the CMC, at the base of your thumb, sitting on a small bone called the trapezium. Years of gripping the needle have worn it loose. Now every stitch shifts it past itself. One shift you'd never feel. But it's a thousand an hour. And as long as it keeps sliding, the pain has nowhere to settle.
That's why it flares twenty minutes in and eases the moment you set the needles down. Age doesn't come and go with the stitching. A loose joint does.
3. The Swelling Is What Keeps Bringing the Pain Back
Once the joint starts shifting, your body swells the tissue around it to protect it. But that swelling is what stiffens the joint. So the next stitch hurts more. More pain, more swelling.
That's why resting doesn't break it. Put the needles down for a week, even two, and the pain settles. Pick them back up, and within an hour it's back. Usually worse than before.
4. Every 'Solution' Doctors Offer You Makes Knitting Harder, Not Easier"
Here is what I check for first, and what almost no one has ever shown you.
It's one joint: the CMC, at the base of your thumb, sitting on a small bone called the trapezium. Years of gripping the needle or the hook and wrapping the yarn have worn the ligaments around it loose. Now every stitch shifts that joint past itself. One shift you'd never feel. But it's a thousand an hour. And as long as it keeps sliding, the pain has nowhere to settle.
When a patient sits in front of me and works a few stitches, I can feel it shift under my fingers. That sliding is the click. It's the deep ache. It's the catch you feel mid-row.
That's why it flares twenty minutes in and eases the moment you set your work down. Age doesn't come and go with the stitching. A loose joint does.
So What Can You Actually Do About It?
There's only one way to get lasting relief: support the joint that's actually sliding, the CMC at the base of your thumb, not just the swelling it causes.
That's harder than it sounds. The brace has to:
✓ Support the one joint every glove and splint leaves moving
✓ Do it without locking the thumb, so you can still work a stitch
✓ Be comfortable enough to keep on the whole time you knit, not for twenty minutes at a stretch
So I set out to build one.
The First Brace Made for the Way a Knitter's Thumb Moves
It's the first brace made around how a knitter's thumb actually moves:
- A contoured pad supports the CMC joint at the base of your thumb, the exact one other braces miss
- All four fingers stay free, so you grip and tension the yarn as you always have
- Soft, lightweight and comfortable, so you can settle in and knit for hours
I've left the link above.
If your hands are anything like the women I see every week, it's worth a look.
— Dr.Simmons
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