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I have spent several days either palming coins or practising a couple of 'knuckle-busting' card sleights, pretty much non-stop.

My thumbs hurt.

Which got me wondering, do magicians/conjurors/legerwhatevers (choose your favourite word) suffer more than average with arthritis or other hand and finger problems in later life?

Nods, thanks for the reply.

However, I was thinking more about longer-term. I don't know your age, but magicians in their forties, fifties, who have been sleighting up the stage for many years.

I'm a newcomer myself, but at 36 you start thinking about how your acheing bones will hold up into your fifth decade

misterblack wrote:I have spent several days either palming coins or practising a couple of 'knuckle-busting' card sleights, pretty much non-stop.

My thumbs hurt.

Which got me wondering, do magicians/conjurors/legerwhatevers (choose your favourite word) suffer more than average with arthritis or other hand and finger problems in later life?

Do you actually have arthritis or are you noticing your thumbs hurt for the first time? I'm asking because it's probably more to do with you using muscles and tendons in ways that you haven't done so before and they're now complaining.

I have a very bad right shoulder that's irritated by practicing for long periods with a deck, and it's helped, surprisingly, by glaucosamine sulphate, keeping it warm and taking regular breaks.

They say no pain - no gain, and after practising some sleights that require a lot of dexterity I have found my arm aching a tad.
Not heard of any magicians getting arthritis in later life, but surely all this excercising your hand muscles would make them more supple?

While there are no particular clinical studies out there, I don't think magicians suffer from arthritis more than anyone else in the population. In fact, most of the older magicians I know can do sleights far better than their younger counterparts, even Dai Vernon well into his last years,would say he couldn't do it any more , then do it so well that even if u knew what he was doing, you couldn't see the move. In martial arts there is an expression "the smaller the circle the greater the master". Basically it means that more experienced practitioners appear to need less motion to get the same effect. Possibly the same could be said for the mature experienced magicians.