Pain in the base of your thumb? Perhaps you think it’s arthritis? Or maybe “old age”? Here’s the most likely cause.
Muscles are responsible for most of our pain–and largely overlooked by the medical profession. The most logical thing when you have pain in your hand, thumb, fingers, arm or anywhere else in your body is to look to your muscles!
Sometimes pain in the base of your thumb is caused by
- the thick muscles in the base of your thumb
- muscles in the web between your thumb and index finger or
- a muscle in your arm!
There is a muscle in your arm near your elbow called the brachialis. The brachialis muscle helps you rotate your hand. (All muscles have jobs.) It can be felt mostly above your elbow.
If you have trigger points in that muscle they can cause pain in the whole side of your arm (if your thumb is pointing away from your mid-line.) It also can causes pain at the base of your thumb.
Trigger points are very irritable areas of muscle which cause pain in other parts of the body. The good thing about them is they can be released or relaxed. When you get rid of a trigger point, you get rid of the pain or symptoms caused by the trigger point.
Muscles that are “worked too hard” can either become “tight” or develop trigger points. Either way they cause pain. When you massage or press into those tight, tender areas those muscles can relax and you get relief. Hold (press) each painful area for about 12 seconds. You can go back to an area several times.
It’s amazing how many cases of “arthritis” and “old age” in the thumb joint can be resolved by treating the muscles.
So press into the muscles at the base of your thumb, in the web of your thumb and just above your elbow. If you find painful areas, they can be the cause of your thumb pain. By treating those tender places, you can get rid of the pain in your thumb naturally.