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10 Things You'll Completely Understand If You Have Clubbed Thumbs
You can forget about press-on nails.
I didn't know there was anything unusual about my hands until I was in sixth grade, sitting on the bus to an away game with the rest of the cheerleading squad. I rested my hand on the back of an eighth grader's seat, which is when she noticed my thumb.
"Oh my gosh! You have the same weird thumbs I do," she exclaimed."I've never met anyone else who has them!"
Weird? I thought. What's so weird about them?
Well, it turns out I'm one of less than .5% of Americans whose thumbs are affected by brachydactyly type D, which sounds like a flying dinosaur but definitely isn't. More commonly referred to as "clubbed thumbs" and often comically called "toe thumbs" (delightful!), brachydactyly type D is an inherited condition in which "the end bones of the thumbs are shortened but all the fingers are normal," according to HealthLine. In addition to our thumbs being pretty stumpy, those of us who have clubbed thumbs also have wider-than-average, shorter-than-average thumbnails, and they have no backward arch to them.
Jealous?
There are no dire complications related to brachydactyly type D — at least not medical ones. But anyone who's lived with these quirky digits — and there are an estimated 1 to 2 million of us in the U.S. alone — know that there are plenty of "side effects" that come with them.
Marci Robin is a freelance writer and editor specializing in beauty and lifestyle content. With over 20 years of experience, Marci has served as a contributing editor for Allure, senior beauty editor at GoodHousekeeping.com, executive editor of xoVain and senior online editor at NewBeauty. Her writing has also appeared in her writing has also appeared in InStyle, MarthaStewart.com and Refinery29.
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