Apple watch and shoulder pain

Does anyone else have pain in their shoulders or other joints since wearing their apple watch?

I got a new apple watch about 6 months ago which I have been wearing daily on my left wrist. At about the same time I started to get a slight pinching pain in my left medial deltoid muscle. I have tried everything to remedy this pain but without result. I have also recently undergone a series of excruciating physiotherapy treatments but the pain still persists. Today I was sitting in the movie theater with my son and I suddenly had a realization that the pain started around the same time that I got the watch!. I immediately placed the watch in my bag and on my return home I started to research if anyone else was experiencing the same thing and I am astounded by the number of chat groups and websites from other people who believe that their pains are related to wearing the watches. Lots of people experiencing pain in their wrists, elbows, shoulders and arms in general. I don't sleep in my watch but I do otherwise wear it for around 16-18 hours per day.

Is anyone else experiencing the same thing and what have you done?

Apple Watch Series 3

Posted on Jun 20, 2018 1:15 PM

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Lawrence Finch

Community+ 2025

Level 10

228,792 points

Posted on Jul 28, 2018 10:59 AM

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).

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26 replies

deggie

Level 10

167,525 points

Jul 28, 2018 10:43 AM in response to costinvlad

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.

deggie

Level 10

167,525 points

Jul 28, 2018 10:45 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

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.)

Jul 28, 2018 11:16 AM in response to costinvlad

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.

Jul 28, 2018 11:25 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

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.

Dec 5, 2018 7:41 AM in response to Albatr055

Albatr055 wrote:

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.

What did your doctor say?

deggie

Level 10

167,525 points

Jul 28, 2018 4:44 AM in response to costinvlad

No, there are people who think they are affected by it.

Jul 28, 2018 10:49 AM in response to deggie

I love it! Anti-vaxxers make me so angry. Andrew Wakefield has a lot to answer for.

Jul 28, 2018 11:01 AM in response to costinvlad

And yes i belive in vaccines ...

Aug 3, 2018 7:46 AM in response to Uzimcwoozie

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

Fred-101

Level 1

4 points

Jan 3, 2019 9:14 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

I stopped wearing mine for a few days and pain went away. Put it back on tonight and pain started up again. I have only looked at my watch 3 times. So I see your point on using your arm more often but I haven’t looked at hardly at all and the numbness has returned. I’ve changed how the band fits and that didn’t work either. I wonder if it has to do with the HR monitor because this also happened with the fitbit I returned.

Jan 4, 2019 7:01 AM in response to Fred-101

I wonder if it has to do with the HR monitor because this also happened with the fitbit I returned.

Shining lights at your arm will not cause pain in a normal person. See your doctor.

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Apple watch and shoulder pain