Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Unrelated to Typing?

hug_the_penguin writes "Betanews is reporting about a Harvard medical school report that suggests Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is unrelated to typing at all. Suggested causes may be genetic disposition, body weight, fractured bones or even pregnancy." From the article: "Now, don't go out typing to your heart's content. Researchers still warned that improper computer use could cause different types of repetitive stress injuries, of which carpal tunnel is incorrectly described as one."

Comments

Hmm...

[MaestroSartori]

I'd always been told it was pressure on the carpal tunnel that caused it, not finger movements. So typing with your wrists pressed against the corner of a desk (or in the case more familiar to me, playing bass guitar with the right wrist pressed against the top edge of the instrument) would cause it, not typing with a nice wrist rest or with hands held high, piano-style, above the desk...

They are right - sort of

[canuck57]

"Betanews is reporting about a Harvard medical school report that suggests Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is unrelated to typing at all.

I didn't get mine by typing, I got it from the mouse. Having clicked for so long I finally got sharp pains and the symptoms. And does it hurt.

So I switched to my left hand for the mouse, continue to type and it is slowly getting better.

Might I suggest to researchers to really do some pure no BS research. What they might find is the ergonomics of many of todays offices and computers are the problem. Some I/T people work in closets. And that "touch pad" on my portable, more than once I have thought about taking an electric drill to it to destroy it.

Computers need to fit people, not the other way around.

What about Ulnar Tunnel?

[AndyBassTbn]

Over this last summer, the ridiculous amount of typing I was doing caused by ring finger and pinky to go numb. Thinking it was Carpal Tunnel, I went to the doctor, who confirmed to me that Carpal Tunnel is not usually caused by typing.

What she did tell me, however, was that I likely had Ulnar Tunnel Syndrome. Though this is also not caused by typing, it was the resting of my elbow on the desk which applied pressure on the Ulnar Nerve, causing numbness and pain.

Couple this with my career as a professional trombonist, and I had trouble.

The moral of the story is simple - it is not so much how much you type (or perform), it is the position of your hand and arm whilst doing it. Keeping a natural, "open" posture is ultimately the best way to prevent these problems.

I Have This... I Think..

[scheming daemons]

I suffer from this all the time. The guy I ride to work with has the uncanny habit of slowing down to less than 20 miles per hour when he enters a tunnel, even though the speed limit is 55 both outside and inside the tunnel.

I want to kill him when he does this, but it's not my fault... for you see, I have:

Carpool Tunnel Syndrome

oh... you're talking about something else?