How We Healed Our Text Thumb

Text thumb was our worst discovery of 2017. We were in pain. We were hurting. Our poor thumbs were experiencing some serious joint pain, and we knew our social media addiction was at the root of the problem.

We were completely addicted to Instagram, soaking up all the new features like Stories and Instagram Live, while fighting off carpal tunnel syndrome. Between scrolling, hashtagging and endlessly sharing memes and viral videos, our hands were paying the price.

We weren’t ready to give up our social media addiction though. We called it “research” and being on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook helped us connect with people from all over the world.

We were working quietly on the beginnings of Vellum Wellness, and attempting to define what "wellness" meant to us. We understood the importance of being in good health, and actively pursuing that goal, but we weren’t about to give up all our bad habits.

Wellness means different things to different people. It doesn't matter if you smoke a pack a day, or not at all. It doesn't matter if you bathe in coconut oil, or vape hash oil. It doesn't matter if you're vegan or have a daily diet of edibles. We all deserve wellness, and we all have different ideas about what that means. It's about your personal best.

We started giving ourselves daily hand massages throughout the day, especially at 4:20. It felt incredible to put acknowledge our text thumb, put our phones down and really focus on getting between the joints while we massaged our hands.

Relieving ourselves of smartphone thumb through massage became a cherished part of our day. We called our mini hand massages ‘hand jobs’, and met with our formulator, discussing ways to elevate our favourite time of day.

We created Elevate Hand Lotion – our super fast absorbing, ultra hydrating hand lotion. We were eager to get back on Instagram, and needed a lotion that wouldn’t leave a sticky, greasy residue while swiping and scrolling.

Jerking off daily with Elevate HHL eased our text thumb pain and we began to appreciate our hands in a whole new way. We made our way back to Instagram for our first campaign – “Between the Joints".

We flooded timelines with hands. We shared over 500 images from artists all over the world, as we explored everything from nail art to neon light art, from sculptures to gifs, from fashion editorials to movie clips. Aristotle once said "the hand is the tool of tools" and we soon discovered artists like Chloe Bennett (@yeahyeahchloe) and Alvaro Castro (@alvarocastrodesign) must have had the same thoughts, as hands are often the subject of their art.