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Carpal Tunnel- Laptops Better than Ergo Keyboards?
An anonymous reader asks: "I have chronic tendonitis in my wrists (I think of it as incipient carpal tunnel syndrome). I shied away from laptops for years, thinking the cramped keyboard would aggravate my condition. About six months ago, circumstances forced me to break down and get a laptop. I didn't have any major problems with the keyboard - it's only now that I've switched back to a wireless mouse and an ergonomic keyboard that I've started to have any pain. Amazingly, the laptop is more comfortable for me to use long term. Has anyone had a similar experience? What's the explanation? Is it the shorter stroke depth on the keys? The fact that you can put your hands closer together than on a standard keyboard?"
I don't know the why so I can't really help you, but I have noticed the same thing.
Well, let me take a stab... perhaps we have a tendency to position (and reposition) the laptop however it feels most comfortable. Maybe it's just giving better variety?
Here before all but 8486 of you.
Did you use a wrist wrest with the ergonomic keyboard? Lots of laptops have a somewhat built in wrist rest (any that have a touch pad, I guess.) I think having your wrists balanced and at the level of the keys makes a big difference. It relieves a lot of the stress on your wrists.
my wife has ct so bad while pregnant with our first kids that she eventally needed surgery.
several months she wore braces at night with a covered metal plate that ran the length of her forearm (strapped on) and the plate ran up over the underside of her wrist into her palm. The plate was bent over at the wrist to push her hands backward (like you are stopping a car with a hand signal). The device also tended to rotate the hands laterally (away from center line). The position gave her significant relief from ct symptoms.
the orientation of your wrists while typing on a laptop is typically very different than typing on a normal keyboard. I'd bet that the angle in your wrists while typing in the laptop is such that it afford more room in your carpal tunnel for the tendons and they don't rub around so much.
I, too, have experienced the same thing. I've no real knowledge as to why this is, but I would imagine that since the keys are closer together, we place our hands closer together, making them go in a more natural diagonal position (/ \) instead of just being straight (| |) like in normal spaced keyboards. Also, since the screen is attached to the laptop, the back and neck are in a better position which overall relaxes the arm muscles.
/me hugs his laptop.
Just my random shot at it. Anyways, if it aint broke, don't fix it! I can barely spend a good day's work on my desktop anymore, after using my laptop religiously for almost half a year. Not necessarily due to discomfort in the wrist or anything, but just fatigue in general.
- shazow
At least for me, the problem went away as soon as I learned to discipline myself to no rest my wrists on the keyboard; keep your hands up and flat and you shouldn't have any troubles.
Most likely with the laptop you're holding it in a position that takes the compression off your wrists.
While I don't have CT, I did suffer from this annoying wrist and forearm pain from time to time. I've found that a regular workout program that includes forearm curls and streching/flexing have cut down my pain to just about none.
Try the wrist curls sometime... Chicks dig my Popeye forearms now.
They are both horribly prone to problems, but they are so vastly different in how you hold your hands and what muscles you use, I'm thinking that they provide a nice balance.
Either that or next week my arms will explode.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Ok, I honestly can't diagnose your situation. But in my experience, the mouse has made FAR MORE difference than the keyboard in causing me trouble. Try switching to a trackball or a trackpad. It takes a bit to get used to the trackball, and they definitely don't have the precision on a mouse (no FPS for you!), but for most purposes, they're perfectly adequate, and they generally put far less stress on the wrist.
I never had trouble with my wrists. Ok, occasionally my wrist would hurt from putting all of my weight on it, but that was a skin-deep problem, not a carpel-tunnel or tendonitis problem. Then I got a summer job using Visual Basic. VB takes mouse usage to new heights, and within 2 months I had serious problems. Fancy keyboards, special extra-large mice, wrist braces, etc. didn't help much. I learned to mouse with my left hand, and that helped since I could spread the stress out. Even after I left that job, I had problems with my right wrist.
Then as I was starting a new job and getting set up with my office equipment, I asked the hardware guy if he had anything that would help with wrist problems. He gave me a "Microsoft Trackball Optical" (some prefer the the "Microsoft Trackball Explorer", so try them both). To make a long story short, over the next 3 months I stopped needing my wrist brace, and over the past 2.5 years, I haven't had any serious trouble. I now have a mouse (any mouse) and a Trackball Optical hooked up to every desktop computer I own. Most of the time, I use the trackball. When I do something where the trackball doesn't work well, I use the mouse.
Looking back, I've done a little bit of research. It turns out that the Microsoft Intellimouse I was using back then has become famous for causing wrist trouble. When it was designed, they did customer studies to find out what shape people liked best, and people chose the old Microsoft Intellimouse as the most comfortable. That was fine for short-term use, but over long-term use, it turned out to be terrible. The hump at the back forced you to bend your wrist. Newer designs have removed this hump.
So don't necessarily blame the keyboard! Try a mouse alternative, or at least make sure your current mouse is well designed (if you are using an older Microsoft mouse, get it replaced immediately, and stomp on it before throwing it away so that it won't ever be able to hurt anyone ever again!).
In addition, get your workstation layout evaluated. Either study up on it yourself, or get somebody who knows about it to evaluate your office for you. Here are a few key points:
Start with the chair. Your feet should firmly reach the ground. You should sit up straight.
When sitting up straight, your eyes should be lined up with a point on the top half of your screen. If you tend to slouch (like I do), your eyes should line up with the top of the screen. If you tend to sit up straight, your eyes should line up with a point 1/3 of the way down the screen.
Your keyboard should be positioned so that when you are in standard typing posture, the part of the arm above the elbow is hanging straight down and the elbow makes a 90 degree bend so that they are parallel to the floor. This should allow you to type with NO VERTICAL BEND in your wrist. The keyboard should be positioned horizontally so that the "6" key lines up with the center of the monitor. Don't line up your keyboard's physical center with the monitor -- line it up so that home row is centered. If you have a split keyboard, this can allow you to type with no bending AT ALL in your wrist. If you have a normal keyboard, your wrists will have a slight bend to one side. That is bad, but acceptable. It isn't acceptable for one wrist to be bent more than the other. And it isn't acceptable for there to be ANY vertical bend.
The mouse needs to be placed so you can switch from keyboard to mouse without moving your elbow (which is directly beneath your shoulder, remember?). Unfortunately for right-handed people, that put
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