Question: My doctor recently diagnosed me with "trigger finger." He says all I can really do is rest it and massage it. There has to be something better to treat this. It's really getting in the way of my daily life.

Dr. Wright: Unless you have had trigger finger, chances are good that you've probably never even heard of it--or, at the very least, you may not be familiar with what it is.

According to the Mayo Clinic website: "Trigger finger is a condition in which one of your fingers or your thumb catches in a bent position. Your finger or thumb may straighten with a snap––like a trigger being pulled and released. If trigger finger is severe, your finger may become locked in a bent position.

Often painful, trigger finger is caused by a narrowing of the sheath that surrounds the tendon in the affected finger. People whose work or hobbies require repetitive gripping actions are more susceptible. Trigger finger is also more common in women than in men, and in anyone with diabetes. Treatment of trigger finger, also known as stenosing tenosynovitis, varies depending on the severity."

The website also offers some advice for relieving trigger finger. Their recommendations are: rest (which means not using the finger at all--and I'd certainly like to see any Mayo Clinic physician try that!), splinting, finger exercises (what happened to rest?), soaking in warm water, and, for less serious and not-so-painful cases, massage. For more serious and/or painful cases, the suggestions are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications, "space alien" versions of cortisone, and surgical procedures.

Obviously, the "experts" don't have any truly reliable treatments for trigger finger. But even though it's not listed on the Mayo Clinic website, there is a simple, safe, and very reliable treatment that's worked every time I've asked anyone with this problem to try it, since 1975. That's 36 years, and so far it hasn't failed once! The only "drawback" is that a full recovery can take up to six months, or occasionally longer.

The cure for trigger finger was discovered by Dr. John Ellis, who published information on it in his books The Doctor Who Looked at Hands (1971) and Vitamin B6: The Doctor's Report (1973). (Dr. Ellis also followed up on all of his 50+ years of work with vitamin B6 in 1998 in Vitamin B6 Therapy: Nature's Versatile Healer. This book is available from used book sources online. I think every practitioner should have a copy!)

As you probably guessed from the last paragraph, the cure for trigger finger is vitamin B6. 50 milligrams of a form of vitamin B6 called pyridoxal-5-phosphate (P5P) taken three times daily will slowly diminish and then eliminate even the worst trigger fingers. Just keep in mind that it can take up to six months, although many less serious cases take considerably less time.

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