Yoga that helped
My DQT onset was instant, I woke up with it fully formed in my left hand one day November 2025. I tried to ignore it, like it was tennis elbow, which of course didn't work. I wish I had dug more deeply into what it was, I would have dealt with it right away if I knew the tendon sheath can burst. I've been resting and rehabilitating it the last five or six weeks, doing a lot of yoga and specialized exercises I mostly found on Youtube. It is getting steadily better, though not as quickly as I'd hoped. I'm a builder, and this stops my working cold.
I eliminated some of the exercises that sometimes made it feel worse, and I found an excellent guide at yogajala [dot] com, "Yoga for De Quervain’s Tenosynovitis: Ease Thumb Pain." All of these help a lot, and I've started doing them three times a day, or just when I'm feeling stiff. "Fist-to-Fan Tendon Glides," just slowly opening your hands through the range of motion, stopping if it hurts, have been especially good. Easy to remember and engages breath. Since I am feeling hints of DQT in my right hand as well, I'm being as attentive to it as I can be. Putting both hands through the routines should help, I think. Has anyone successfully headed off a case they felt coming? One theme I keep hearing repeated is you must relax and stretch your whole upper body, to lessen the chance of thumb over-work.
Use myofascial release balls (or a super ball like I did) to break up the gripping thumb muscles of the palm. Massage forearm muscles attached to affected tendons. 1200 mgs of Advil/day. Use a spica splint, though mine seemed to cause more pain than it helped, and I couldn't figure a way to bend the aluminum insert to make it not hurt. Diclofenac topically, and ice 3-4x/day. Eat good food, take vitamins, minerals, hydrate, and sleep.