Apple watch and shoulder pain

I am not a pseudoscience advocate, i belive in traditional medicine deggie .... But i also belive in electromagnetic hipersensitivity syndrome because there is no other explanation for the dull pain that i got using any smart watch !

I tried wearing it loose on right hand, then on left hand and the pain is there after half a day.... I even put it on airplane mode and wear it like that and the pain keept coming back .... i return it ,only to buy it a mounth later (this proves how much i liked the watch) hoping it was just related to something else but no the pain came back... so explain that to me because no doctor could ... And yes i wear watches since i was 14 ... I am 36 now btw.....I even sleep with my watch on my hand.....

I've just considered the same conclusion that the OP did. A few details about me. I'm 33 years old— I'm a flamenco guitarist, so wrist twisting motions fast, loose, and fluid are typical in daily activity. I've never had an issue with tendentious, I'm very careful about my form for that reason. I've seen a surgeon, a GP, and a physical therepist. I have no injury to my shoulder, but I've had 4:10 pain daily in the medial deltoid that shoots down to my wrist. I've assumed it's something I've done, but no evidence of injury, just weakness, pain, and inflammation. It's even become difficult for me to get to sleep at night. I Have had an apple watch series one and now the Series 3. I believe in traditional medicine. I have been icing, and taking NSAIDs for my shoulder for a month. I stopped wearing my watch because It became difficult for me to put on a shirt on let alone a belt and a watch. Today I decided to put it on for the first time in a month and that's when this idea occurred to me to search the internet. The Dr. was perplexed when I told her that I had the same kinds of pain in my left shoulder a year ago. Now I have Pain in the right shoulder for the last 8 months. It was at that time that I switched my Watch from my left wrist to my right wrist. Why? so that I could skip songs while my hand stayed on my electric bike throttle on the right grip. I did not put a single ounce in the idea that some electronic voodoo was causing my issue— I have apple airpods, and use wireless controllers and I laugh at people that think that short waves are dangerous, I honestly don't think they are. I doubt that my cells are being damaged, but I don't doubt that my nerves may be confused by a signal(s) coming— all I know is I have real pain and no explanation. I'm not blaming the watch or EMR. Science probably has not had enough time to 'watch' this issue, and see if there is some portion of the user population that is hyper sensitive EMR. I love my apple watch, I love my airpods. And when my shoulder feels better again, I will be the first person to strap it back on my wrist, but if it hurts again. I will update my post and let everyone know. Mostly I came to share my specific symptoms in hopes of coordinating with others. I'll chime back in at some point in my healing process, and I will wear my watch again, even if it hurts me, but I'll let you all know.

I had the same problem ! I give up wearing the watch and the pain is gone ! I loved the watch but there are people affected by the small electromagnetism that comes along with smartwatches ! See electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome !

Think about it for a moment. You have a watch that contains a lot of information on your wrist. You are going to pick up your arm to look at your wrist frequently, much more than you have ever done in your life most likely. And it is an unusual motion, requiring you to twist your wrist and raise your elbow and hold it in that position for longer than you ever looked at a watch, all unnatural movements. This will put a strain on muscles that have never experienced this before. So yes, the phone is probably causing the pain, but for a very obvious reason having nothing to do with anything more exotic.

But what you should do is see a doctor, probably a neurologist. That's what I did when I had wrist pain near where I was wearing my  Watch. An EMG revealed that I had mild CTS in that arm, and he concluded that the pressure of the watch on my wrist was aggravating it. It didn't happen with my Rolex because the band was looser. I moved the watch to the other wrist and the problem went away (and did not happen on the other wrist, which did not exhibit CTS in the EMG).

Hi

I’ve had the exact same. My left shoulder is agony and I have also had physio and lots of anti inflammatory drugs.

It still persists but last week I noticed how bad it is when I lift my wrist to activate my Apple Watch.

I’ve now moved it to my right arm and it seems to be ok. Until my right shoulders starts hurting too. Lol

Obviously it has nothing to do the electromagnetic or any other electronic device on wrist.

It’s because to activate the watch face you have to twist your wrist as you bring it up to face. This twists the shoulder joint and over continuous use causes inflammation. It’s a common injury in Tennis players.

IdrisSeabright wrote:

It's quite possible that a doctor does.

I used to be amazed at how much doctors know. Now I've come to accept that you can learn an incredible amount in 10 or more years of constant study and many more years of seeing all kinds of problems. There's a reason a doctor's business is called a "practice" as they are constantly practicing and learning. ICD 10, the manual of diagnoses that are used for coding for sharing information among doctors and for reporting to insurance companies currently has 14,400 different diagnoses. And good doctors know most of them.

I don't know about the wrist pain but the shoulder pain I believe can be explained by the repetitive motion to look at your watch. In order to "wake the screen" most people use an exaggerated arm swing. Bringing your arm up in front to while pronating your forearm can cause shoulder impingement. This repetitive motion of closing the space down in the shoulder joint is not the best for your shoulder. After awhile tendons and bursa in the joint can become inflamed which could be the cause of the shoulder pain/ache.

Deggie there are so many posts about dull or strange pain.....that, it does not make any sense for me to convince you that there are people that suffer from electromagnetic hipersensitivity syndrome !

The fact that you don't have any issue it doesn't mean it don't exist .

Best wishes !

I have the same problem. I haven’t worn my watch for about a month now and the pain is dissipating. I have seen the doctor and paid for sessions with a chiropractor to try and resolve this. I wonder if the watch is faulty or if some people are more susceptible to whatever is causing this..

Wow, this is making more sense now. I've never had any shoulder or joint issues until a few months ago. Started wearing Apple Watch series 1 in July this year and in September/October I started getting shoulder and upper back pain. When it started both of my shoulders felt like they would be on fire 3-4x a day for 15-30 minutes, then pain would go away completely for a few hours. Now it has progressed to the flare ups on my left shoulder, still 3-4x a day for 15-30 minutes and shooting jolting pains stemming down my arm to my finger tips as well. The pain is mostly gone from my right shoulder after the first month or so and only persists in my left now, the arm I wear my watch on. Also have noticed significant difficulty sleeping fully through the night since I started wearing it. I can't sleep through the night, am up every 2-3-4 hours with mind racing (not sure what cause but possibly related).

I find it hard to believe that theres no connection to this. I've never had shoulder issues, currently 36 years old. I want to believe its safe but at the end of the day we're beaming radiation directly into our bloodstream for the majority of the day.

Very interesting to see such common cases here as well. Will be interesting to see what future studies find.

I’ve already posted what is most likely causing this.

costinvlad wrote:

Deggie there are so many posts about dull or strange pain.....that, it does not make any sense for me to convince you that there are people that suffer from electromagnetic hipersensitivity syndrome !

The fact that you don't have any issue it doesn't mean it don't exist .

No, but the fact that numerous scientific studies have found no evidence of it is a pretty good argument that it doesn't exist. Getting stuck on the idea that some non-exisitant phenomenon is the cause of your problem only stands in the way of finding the real problem.

No but the fact that there has been a plethora of studies of non-ionizing radiation, all which show that it does not cause any cell damage, and many and many, many double-blind tests of subjects that claimed this hypersensitivity that proved they could not tell when they were exposed does mean it does not exist.

If there were millions of posts about it then you might have a point, and if these studies did not already exist. Also you are bombarded daily with much higher levels of non-ionizing radiation from a variety of sources.

Despite the claims of the quack Dr. Mercola an others you cite the syndrome does not exist.

Great minds and all that. I have a new T-Shirt on a related topic that surprisingly has gotten me more compliments in this area than arguments: "Vaccines Cause Adults" (we have significant minority of parents here that are antivaxxers.)

costinvlad wrote:

I am not a pseudoscience advocate, i belive in traditional medicine deggie .... But i also belive in electromagnetic hipersensitivity syndrome because there is no other explanation for the dull pain that i got using any smart watch !

Just because you don't understand how planes work doesn't mean magic carpets are real. The fact that you don't know the cause of the problem doesn't mean that something that is scientifically implausible is the answer. It just means that you don't know what the answer is. It's quite possible that a doctor does.