Almost everyone has a smartphone these days and we are holding onto it all day long. We practically can’t function without them and it has created a problem for some. Tapping the screen all day has lead to repetitive stress conditions called “texting thumb” or “trigger thumb”. For gamers, it is referred to as “gamers thumb” and happens from gaming long hours with game controllers. Left untreated, the pain in the thumb can worsen and also cause tendinitis in the arm.

The official medial term for this condition is De Quervain’s tenosynovitis. Symptoms of this condition start with pain in the wrist below the base of the thumb. If not taken care of, your tendons become inflamed from overuse causing hand pain and in severe cases the need for surgery. Orthopedic doctors recommend these practices to help prevent getting to that point.

• Keeping your elbows straight to not restrict blood flow or text with the phone on a table.
• Switch to texting with your fingers on one hand while holding the phone in the other.
• Use hands-free commands and voice recognition.
• Do smartphone stretches by taking breaks to stretch your tendons and muscles.
• Applying hot or cold compress to your tendons and muscles to relax them.
• Massaging the hand to loosen the stiff muscles.

An Old Solution for a New Problem

As you can see, baoding balls can help prevent texting thumb by keeping your tendons and muscles nimble and stretched. The balls also have a massaging affect on the acupressure points in the hand.

If you are starting to experience symptoms such as stiffness, numbness, cramps, pain, or tingling when using your phone, it’s time to take action before it’s too late. Continuing to ignore the symptoms can lead to years of worse hand problems and symptoms that don’t go away without help from a doctor.

The way the earth has created the variety of natural gemstones in the world is a remarkable part of nature. Holding such stones like quartz, hematite, tigers eye, and amethyst, you’ll often wonder how can nature create such things so beautiful. The old saying “A diamond in the rough” rings true as the beauty is hidden until it can be revealed through a labor and time intensive process.

Baoding Balls in the Rough

In the geology world, plain stones cut from the mines start out as roughs. They might appear as normal looking rocks that you see on the ground. Our solid semi-precious gemstones balls are always made of natural stones that start out as roughs.

Rough gemstones before being carved to baoding balls

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Beware of fake stone materials. Many gemstone objects today are made by imitation or synthetic materials. Creative techniques have allowed some materials to mimic the look of natural stones very closely. Many imitation stones are even labeled and called natural by dishonest sellers so you have to be careful.

From the rough gemstones, a saw is used cut the stone into pieces resembling a ball. They start by cutting squares pieces and then cutting off the corners and edges until a round object resembling a dodecahedron is formed. Then the edges are grounded until a ball is formed. It takes a skilled craftsman to make nice round balls.

Outer Beauty is Inner Beauty Made Visible

The next critical step is the polishing phase where the gemstone spheres are put through a multi-step polishing procedure. First, the balls are polished with a coarse polishing material to even out the surface.

Then they are polished repeatedly gradually using finer polishing compounds and materials. This step is most important to reveal the glossy shine in the gemstones.

Every Gemstone Ball is Unique

One characteristic of natural gemstone baoding balls is that no two balls are alike. We often don’t realize when holding a pair of gemstone baoding balls is that you are holding something that took thousands of years to create. Each ball will have its own unique colors, patterns, and appearance. The rocks in the ground are constantly changing from the earth’s movement. Rocks crack under pressure and the cracks are fused with other stones of the same type or another. Molten magma crystallizes into quartz. Minerals and sediment settle and diffuse into the stones. There is a lot going on in the earth’s crust creating the gemstone’s unique appearance of veins, fractures, pits, and banded layers. While writing this, I am reminded of a saying that you are made of flaws and that is what makes you beautiful. That’s very true of things created in nature.