I watch causing Wrist and arm numbing and pain?

No, it is not the monitor, which is just a light and sensor. It is the watch pressing on nerves in your wrist. try wearing it higher on your wrist. It could also be simply that you are raising your wrist more to look at it.

Got my Sport watch and band several months ago. After a week or two I developed fleeting tingling and mild twitching in volar-ulnar forearm. Moved watch to other arm and the sensation disappeared. Repeated that cycle twice with same result. Loosened band one notch and have not had any symptoms since. The band humps up a bit where the loose strap end goes through the hole in the other half of the strap, over the ulnar nerve/artery. Conclusion: benign pressure on ulnar nerve, nearby forearm vasculature or a muscle in that area, resolved. Since then I have worn that watch morning to night on that arm every day with no symptoms. I did some googling and found numerous examples of other watch bands having similar pressure effects in pre-digital watch brands.

It might because the position you wear your watch is not proper. You'd better wear it above your wrist knuckle.

I find this video helpful.

How To Wear Your Apple Watch For Maximum Comfort

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj3zHLnJBPI

It is not the watch band or the Apple brand alone, its the technology. I purchased a Sony SmartWatch and wore it for 5 minutes and my fingers tingled and forearm muscle tightened like I was wearing a tens unit. There is radiation and waves of electromagnetic signals transmitted by these technologies which affect all of us differently dependent on the Hz's your body is emitting. I am sending my sony watch back...I don't think the technology is worth putting my health at risk.

BSLTRL wrote:

There is radiation and waves of electromagnetic signals transmitted by these technologies which affect all of us differently dependent on the Hz's your body is emitting.

Science says otherwise. Go see your doctor.

Does your hand tingle when you hold a cell phone in it? A cell phone emits from 100 to 300 times the amount of radiation that the watch does, so if it's radiation that causes your problem it will be 100 or more times worse using a phone.

As a physician, this kind of claim is baseless. Your assumption that someone has a medical condition is unfounded. Equally probable is that the device is producing the problem rather than unmasking something already present. It may be tempting to counter with "well I wear an Apple Watch every day and I don't have that problem, so there must be something wrong with that person!" This would be false logic designed solely to support a theory you may have constructed in your mind. The variability in the human body is immense. There are numerous biochemical pathways that can result in pain symptoms and there is absolutely no way to know which of many might be at play in this situation. Only more extensive examination of the issue has any potential to reveal commonalities or causality.

You have a very concrete and slightly warped understanding of how the human body works. Your persistent efforts to tell people they have an underlying medical condition and blind insistence that a new, untested en masse electronic device, worn in intimate proximity to the body could not be causing the problem de novo are total rubbish. I'm beginning to suspect you may work for Apple or someone that profits from the sale of these watches. Certainly no one with any actual medical training would dismiss a group of individuals with similar symptoms exposed to the same thing. While I certainly would not state that the Apple Watch is the cause of the symptoms, your insistence that it cannot be the cause is disturbingly inaccurate. Medical history is replete with examples of someone shouting "psychosomatic!" before the real cause is understood. Your feedback on this matter should be wholly dismissed.

Joshua Morganstein wrote:

Only more extensive examination of the issue has any potential to reveal commonalities or causality.

That is correct, which is why KiltedTim said to see the Dr. Since the only transmission from the Apple Watch is low power Bluetooth, which is even lower power than that of a cellular phone, the problem could not be attributed to emissions, it would need to be something about the person, which is why you would ask a doctor.

No they are not. They may be symptoms of cubital tunnel syndrome but not carpal tunnel which essentially never involves the little finger. Cubital tunnel syndrome would involve activities at the elbow but would be extraordinarily unlikely to result from a watch band. While it is possible that wearing a watch could cause carpal tunnel, the band would have to be extraordinarily tight, for individuals with standard anatomy, to apply enough pressure on an ongoing basis that might result in persistent symptoms of carpal tunnel. It's amazing how confidently you are repeatedly dispensing faulty medical information.

I'm board certified in both family medicine and psychiatry. A doctor will attempt to do what several of you are doing, which is to go down a laundry list of diagnoses with which they are familiar. Once that is exhausted, they will start talking about psychosomatic issues. For a period of time many decades ago, the medical profession thought asthma was caused by overbearing mothers. Obviously, we now understand that is not the case. Mechanical causes such as compression, new patterns of physical use of the wrist and arm and other potential causes are quite realistic. Insisting those are the only possibilities other than a mental health disorder is preposterous.

At no time did I insist anything at all. What I did say that it needed to be diagnosed by a doctor. I will say this has nothing to do with transmitting radiation and all of that. I tend to believe that most of the issues are caused by the change in usage patterns from people that did not wear watches before this, to people that are doing repetitive motion by swinging the watch up often to look at it. So I can agree with some of your thoughts.

Joshua Morganstein wrote:

You have a very concrete and slightly warped understanding of how the human body works. Your persistent efforts to tell people they have an underlying medical condition and blind insistence that a new, untested en masse electronic device, worn in intimate proximity to the body could not be causing the problem de novo are total rubbish.

I suggest you educate yourself. The idea that 'emissions' from personal electronic devices can cause symptoms such as those described has been proven to be complete bunk.

<Edited by Host>

In support of your assertion, I assume you can offer a research citation disproving that the use of the Apple Watch can cause pain in the wrists and forearms? There has been much study about cell phone use and cancer risk. Literature on bluetooth, in isolation, has also found little in the way of human safety concerns. It is certainly wise for those concerned to avail themselves regarding what appears to be known at the present time regarding health risks associated with various technologies. However, watches are not phones or bluetooth headsets. In general, a watch will spend orders of magnitude greater time in direct proximity to skin than a phone. Moreso, perhaps, since the advent of bluetooth technology to reduce time spent holding a phone to the head. What has not been studied are the potential adverse effects that may result from the combination of transmitting wifi and bluetooth back and forth from watch to phone in a perpetual and ongoing manner, continuous and extended exposure to various light frequencies, and the physical substances out of which the Apple Watch is made. All the commentary noted by a few vocal opponents about each single entity alone (bluetooth, light, ceramic material, etc) and subsequently using this to dismiss the idea of potential harm an Apple Watch is myopic and inconsequential. Apple Watch wearers are not being exposed to a single entity but, rather, a combination of all these things in perpetual and intimate proximity to the body. Attempts to extrapolate research about cell phone cancer risk, health risks of bluetooth devices, or even the science behind non-ionizing radiation to make concrete statements about the potential health risk of an Apple Watch are short-sighted because they are only single pieces of a larger Apple Watch device that is interacting with an extraordinarily complex human body.

Those who have persistent pain that is not relieved by changing the band or adjusting their physical activity should consider that the constellation of technology within an Apple Watch (or any other smartwatch) kept in close proximity to their body may, in fact, be producing the symptoms. Those who insult you, insist this is impossible, or otherwise dismiss expressed concerns are not healthcare professionals. It would be hard to believe they are actually scientists of any kind as the field of science is predicated upon the notion of opening ones mind, rather than closing it, to possibilities. It is also wise to bear in mind that no research study, regardless of how robust and well-constructed, can inform on the individual experiences of all. It will merely provide greater or lesser degrees of confidence regarding associations or, more rarely, causality. Respected researchers will reiterate this fact as people attempt to draw conclusions from their research (typically to perpetuate an individual or institutional agenda) that simply cannot be made. The broad and sweeping dismissal of a potential association that has never been studied in its full form (i.e.; the Apple Watch and wrist pain) is truly the most unscientific aspect of this thread, seems to be done by a few posters primarily as a means of demonstrating intellectual superiority, and should be shunned.

Joshua Morganstein wrote:

There has been much study about cell phone use and cancer risk.

And, the result of all of those studies, taken as a whole, to date, is that there is no increase in risk of cancer from the non-ionizing radiation put out by cell phones. Best scientific evidence would suggest that EM radiation from the watch is not likely to be a problem. But, science is always acquiring more information. Unfortunately, the overlap between doctors and scientists is not 100%.

What pretty much everyone here has said is, "If the watch is causing your pain, go see a doctor. Don't self-diagnose based on scaremongering stories and bad science."