I thought it was a joke when I first heard about, but I am officially a victim of smartphone hand.

I’d been a faithful Blackberry user for years, until I began working at my most recent job. Enter: the iPhone.

Fast-forward a year, and the way in which I’ve been holding it — not to mention the amount of time I use it — have both taken their toll. My right hand is more of a claw (OK, not really), in that it doesn’t like to lay flat on the ground when I do push-ups. It’s never relaxed like my left one is, and always has a sort of perma-bend to it. Boo.

Don’t blame the smartphone, you say? Pshaw. Common denominator! One does not take more than 10 years of piano lessons, function well at a computer since her teenage years and deftly maneuver around a Blackberry for seven years only to have problems from all three things pop up in a year’s time. I blame the iPhone.

While it is a lovely device, I clearly have not been practicing what I wrote about in a recent post: moderation. No, I’ve started using it as my blogging device in the evenings, and when I picked it up last night to check some work email, a pain shot through my hand. The manner in which I was cradling my phone made a lightbulb go on in my head. How I didn’t realize this before now, I have no idea.

Another sneaky no-gooder? Splenda. I’d been using regular Splenda and brown sugar splenda on a more than regular basis for many years, and I started to be plagued with aches and pains 24/7. No good. But, wouldn’t you know, stopping Splenda and simply using the real thing sparingly saw my aches disappear entirely.  As an aside, I once heard artificial sweetener referred to as “diet sugar” by a woman I was sitting next to on a plane. I’d never heard the term before (neither had the flight attendant), but it’s really a lovely idea. “Diet sugar.” Better than asking for a packet of chemicals, I suppose.

At the risk of this post going off the deep end, I will simply say that moderation isn’t limited to food or drink. It extends to smartphone use, Splenda, and so many other things. I’m confident the pain in my hand is an ailment that can disappear with some TLC and a bit of rest, but user be warned: smartphone can equal dumb hand.

Today, despite the difficulty in typing while wearing a brace and relying on my left hand for most tasks, I am thankful for the reminder that everything is fine in moderation — even technology and faux sweeteners.