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JWZ on Dealing with Wrist Pain
Kodi writes "Jamie Zawinski has put an interesting page on his site describing his fight with wrist pain. The most important thing is that you don't ignore it. Also check out the Typing Injury FAQ, which he links to. " Having had a scare a couple weeks ago, I can testify to the truth behind this - we've done some AskSlashdots about this before as well. Don't assume it'll fix itself.
I'm getting wrist pain from checking what VA Linux is trading at every 2 minutes. :)
Wrist pain is more commonly called 'RSI' in the UK, short for 'Repetitive Strain Injury'. It's basically an injury you get from stuff other than just typing: tennis elbow is related to RSI, for instance.
It's all down to posture at the end of the day. I keep thinking about getting one of those posture braces?! They're good for your back and all (I'm well over 6 foot!), but you don't half look a nancy wearing one.. although, health comes before looks I suppose. Anyone got any links to Alexander Technique?!!!
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
Yeah my friends don't ignore it. I did and couldn't use my mouse for three months.
I'm now permanently affected with aches and pains most days.
The worst thing I did (and soemtimes still do) is to rest the weight of my arm on my wrist while mousing using the ball of my wrist as a kind of pivot (obviously for hours at a time).
Take care of yourselves now my friends. The day you start getting pins and needles in your face is the day to take a look at the way you position yourself! ('cos it's pretty scary)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
That "FAQ" doesn't appear to have any questions, frequently asked or otherwise.
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1) Wrist pain from not having enough experience with large amount of typing, mousing, and other similar types of activity.
2) Wrist pain from typing, etc AFTER you have built up the wrist and finger muscles over month or years.
If you have the first problem, from starting a computer-related job after never really doing large amounts of typing before, you can normally just continue with intermittent breaks and will find the pain to diminish as your hands toughen up. Otherwise, if you type 5+ hours a day (like a secretary or heavy programmer) and start experiencing recurring pain, you probably need to see a doctor and think about ergonomic improvements.
...is to get a girlfriend.
(Will it be funny, offtopic, or flamebait? vote now! vote early!)
Dan
I had a Ganglioneuroma develop last year because of typing. Probally from IRC, but work related stuff as well. It is a bunch of nerve cells that is caused by the tendons in the wrist moving too fast for too long. It felt like a gumball size lump in the base of my hand on the top of the wrist. Not very painfull, but causes my left hand to type a little slower.
c7five
I had wrist pain for most of high school. It turns out that I had a whole bunch of torn cartilage in my wrist. Had a surgey and the recovery time was a bear but it is pretty good now. I have had wrist pain since then but because of my job (shoveling). I saw a thing on television about computers and posture and they suggested that the little legs on the keyboard not be used- it seems to actually help a lot!
Remeber, your body has a network of nerves, and your spine is the main 'backbone' (DOH!)...
If the backbone is congested (pinched nerve), the rest of the network doesn't work quite right.
Get your back looked at before you spend big bucks on surgery or pain killers.
I actually find that my mouse is probably more helpful than harmful. The act of moving my hand from the keyboard to the mouse provides some variety which is important.
Consider this: the one time I really experienced wrist pain was after an all-nighter, cranking out a 30 page term paper.
I just don't have the same problem when I'm programming though. I tend to pause and think about things, often taking my hands off the keyboard when I do. I scroll around and browse different files with the mouse. In other words, giving my wrists a break is just part of my work.
Now, if I were to type in a large amount of source code from a book, verbatim, then I'd probably start feeling pain again.
For what it's worth, the Microsoft Natural Keyboard really is a pretty good design (aside from the extra "Win" keys... grr). But if you place your hands on it, your fingertips down to your elbows are in a straight line. If you keep this position, and vary your actions like I said above, you'll be alot less likely to have problems.
Best regards,
SEAL
Specifically that RIS I caused by people who use Keyboards and other systems with insufficient resistance. Notably RSI begins to show up at the same time journalists moved away from mechanical typwrites en masse. Something about he lack of resistance ecouraging/allowing bad hand posture?
Any comments on this? It may also have to do with increased typing speed. However, there have been typing pools since before WWII and RSI seems to be a more modern phenomenon.
I've had some problems with my hands while digging a long trench, but I think that was just old fashioned wear an tear, since they occured after only a few days of work digging.
ok so I probably over evangelise these keyboards, but I just love them :) the Kinesis Contour (kinesis-ergo.com). I've done a quick review of mine at base.yi.org which is maybe worth a read.
Anyway, they're superb for people with wrist injuries. Infact most of the manual is dedicated to how to reduce wrist injuries, and even has a section at the back with an intro written by Herman Miller Inc (those really comfy chairs that Rob and co have from hmstore.com) that goes indepth into workspace ergonomics and risk reduction etc.
I read a good article on repetitive motion
injury in bass player magazine a couple of
years back (They might have it archived @ www.bassplayer.com, but don't take my word for it). It just had a few points in general.. some of the things I picked up were, I bought a pair of
these elastic/molded gloves for $30 and I type with them when i get the pains.. i have to wear them for a while but they start to help.. apparently lower body temperature to the wrist because of bad circulation causes a lot of pains.
I cut down on my caffeine intake about 90%, started wearing the gloves, and regularly take breaks to flex my wrists & fingers.. sometimes dupping them in warm water for a few minutes..
it's helped a lot.. 2 years ago I got so bad that i couldn't type for more than a half hour @ a time.. now i'm great.
"And how can this be? For he is the
Does anyone out there have any preventative measures that don't cost a few hundred dollars? I'm a student right now and can't afford that kind of stuff.
Does anyone have any experience with the Kinesis keyboards? I currently use one of the old style Microsoft ergo keyboards, but the control key is killing me and the ESC key is too far away. Emacs likes the CTRL and ESC keys and I need them closer to home. I find myself constantly pivoting my left hand to do common actions like C-x C-f... that's not good.
Anyone want to comment on the Kinesis keyboards?
apparently jwz is running his webserver off isdn or something :) but it's slashdotted - any one that can get to it willing to throw up a mirror? or post the text here? REMEMBER - include copyright info :)
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i read all replies to my comments
The Computer Users's Survaival guide. Very well
worth it.
Be carefull with RSI. It can really make your life
misserable. And make earning a living very hard.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
xwrits is break software. It reminds you to get up from your computer and take a break every so often. It monitors your typing and mouse usage.
Compared to similar programs for windows it's pretty crude. However, it's effective.
One of the most important things you can do to avoid/prevent/cure typing injuries is to make sure you take adequate breaks. This does not mean lunchtime--this means every 10-15 minutes you get up and stretch.
Programs like xwrits remind you it's time for a break.
Stretching is very important. Stretch your arms, your forearms, your neck, your back, etc., do it frequently. Don't be too aggressive--mild stretching is the best.
Stretching helps promote healing, and keeps muscles from tightening up. A good massage is also a reasonable preventative measure--work on shoulders and upper back problems as problems here are often are responsible for inefficient use of your fingers, wrists, and forearms.
I decided to try Hand-Eze gloves. They are fingerless gloves -- there is a picture at the link. They work for me. I have practically no problem now, and I don't even wear the gloves anymore.
Another thing I did was to start using my left hand for mousing. I'm right-handed so that took a bit of work. The only drawback now is that every time a new quake comes out I have to reconfigure the key bindings. :-)
Code is garbage in garbage out.
Languge is garbage in, non-sequitor out.
back pain. Once you get, you've got it forever. But if you take care of yourself, you may be able to control it. I've had some bad boughts with RSI. These days, I can usually manage it. As someone else said, I find that the two biggest killers are the mouse and the joystick. But it does come down ergonomics. Your fore-arms should be parallel to the floor, at right angles to your body. Your wrists should be straight. I use a mouse pad with a wrist wrest (you don't want to rest your wrist on the desktop, because then your wrist is cocked at an angle). Take frequent breaks and stretch. Definately see someone in occupational health about this. Take some Aleve. Ice up down your forearms and wrest for a while. I've hurt myself more using computers than any sport I've every played. Jared
...Real Programmers (tm) use Direct Neural Interfaces!
/too/ badly, let me share my personal experience. I use a ridiculously small iWhack keyboard mounted on top of what is basically an open drawer, with no hand-resting space or anything. I've been using this setup for more than a year now (since the iWhack arrived here in Brazil), and I've never experienced any kind of wrist or back problems. Nonetheless, I have good posture and the screen is set on a good eye level.
(Okay, moderate me down now. I deserve it.)
Well, just to make sure that I don't get hit
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Kinesis Ergo
My wrists have been popping a LOT recently. Would this be an early warning sign of RSI or something? It generally doesn't hurt but it can't be good. What are some other early warning signs?
WEEMADARTHUR
However, everytime I read an article like this, my wrists start to tingle, and I feel an urgent need to stretch.
:)
Any other time, my wrists feel fine.
I think my therapy solution would be to stop reading articles about repetitive stress injuries...
Quoth the Penguin, "pipe grep more!"
My mother was a secratary/typist for years, and eventually (after not typing for a few years), her wrists started hurting so much that she couldn't sleep at night. Nothing seemed to help so she opted for surgury, which at the time had the risk of, if the doctor screwed up, causing a complete loss of hand motion. Not something you'd want even if you don't type.
So do people still have surgury for CTS? And have the risks gone down?
I suspect the real problem was not the keyboard, but the mouse. Since the keyboard and the mouse sit side-by-side, lowering the keyboard meant lowering the mouse also. This forced my wrist to bend at an odd angle whenever I used the mouse, and indeed, it was after using the mouse almost exclusively for an hour (in a paint program) that I first noticed the pain.
The other wrist pain incident was just after Microsoft came out with their "middle-button wheel" mouse. I made heavy use of the wheel when I first got one of these things, and found that it led to wrist pain (perhaps because rapidly spinning the wheel with the middle finger is a rather unnatural motion). So I stopped rotating the wheel (back to scroll bars, alas!) and the pain went away.
I strongly urge anyone experiencing wrist pain from computer use to take the problem seriously and get it taken care of early. One of my coworkers has been out on disability for nearly three years now because he ignored his wrist pain.
Is it a coincidence that Ben Wing, head of the Xemacs project right now, Jamie Z, "Mr. Lucid Emacs", and Richard Stallman, ALL have wrist pain problems, and have been potentially crippled by them? Is it possible that using EMACS with it's funky key combinations actually CAUSES this problem? Mind you, I'm an emacs user myself. I love it. And don't want to give it up! But umm, this is just too much of a coincidence to not be noticed!
I've been typing 10+ hours a day for more than 10 years (everything from a Laser128 to various PC keyboards, but never any of that new-age "ergonomic" crap!) and I have never experienced wrist pain.
What are you people doing?
Half those years included a lot of masturbation. Maybe you should work that into your therapy?
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#19845
I tried a variety of things, from pain medication to wrapping my wrists in Ace bandages (sometimes with cold packs I kept in the freezer) to going to a sports medicine therapist and trying prescription pills. Ultimately, the single thing that made the most difference (besides cutting down on my acoustic guitar playing) was a $3 padded wrist rest that I bought at Walmart on a whim. Believe it or not, it really helps, and while my wrists are definitely weaker than they were before they started hurting, I can at least use them regularly without pain. You don't have to buy one of those $15-20 gel ones, either - mine is plain black, not terribly soft, and sits at the base of my keyboard. It annoyed the hell out of me for the first week or two, but I got used to it quickly, and really prefer it now. All geeks with wrist pain should get one.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
My thoughts on this are a bit odd, but... DON'T TOUCH TYPE.
:-) I simply know where the keys are. It's a memory thing. I've been typing on a computer since I was 7. You learn the keyboard that way. My touch-typist friends think I'm really odd, since my hands are flying all over the place when I type.
I think that this standard 5-finger technique is the cause of a lot of wrist stress related injuries.
Here's why:
The only time I have ever experienced serious wrist pain is when playing quake for hours on end, and literally not moving my wrists to any great extent. One hand on the keyboard, one on the mouse. The slightest mouse movement spins me around (I keep my sensitivity super high), so my wrist doesn't really move a lot.
I am not a touch typist. I learned to type through massive amounts of practice hunt-and-peck.. Just the way you would naturally learn. I also type 50-60 WPM.
I never get wrist pain even after hours upon hours of typing. Why? I think it's because the wrists are never immobile. It's like a form of very light exercise for the hands.
I see these touch typists who type for hours without lifting their hands at all. They don't even move them to think, because they're so used to the position of their wrists on the keyboard. I'm sorry, but that simply can't be healthy for your wrists. The strain you're putting on them in that position is just too severe, over a long period of time...
Anyway, yes, I probably could type faster if I unlearned the way I type, and learned the "correct" way. But hell, I don't need to type so damn fast that I risk my health, yeh?
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Jamie didn't cover this enough.
When you do your weightlifting (as you all should be doing) add in some wrist curls at the end of your exercises (do it at the beginning and you will injure yourself doing other chest or arm exercises) and you'll feel great. Always. I haven't had wrist pain since I started this ~8 months ago.
-bugg
Even if you're under deadline pressure or otherwise typing in a frenzy, you should always keep your shoulders, arms, and hands relaxed when typing. It doesn't take a great deal of force or movement to type quickly, so don't overexert.
These injuries are not inevitable, even if you sit and type for long periods of time. In college, I majored in piano, and they repeatedly told us that RSI is preventable as long as you make sure you don't tense up when playing. The same applies to typing, or any fine motor activity.
I've had the problem myself, and yes you can work on it yourself. IANAD, and your milage may vary, but...
Thing one. Act early. I started to get tingly feelings in my fingers, they started to twitch a bit on their own, and it was a little painful to stretch them out fully. Does that sound familiar? If so - STOP. Right now.
Thing two. Get a wrist pad - it's the cheapest addition that might help you. DO NOT get a foam one - these are junk IMO. Get a GEL wristpad (about $15 at a computer store).
Thing three. READ THE FAQ. Understand it. Work on ergonimics. Rearrange your work area. Use bricks and boards if you have to - it doesn't have to look pretty.
Thing four. Take breaks. Do the stretches. Work on (gasp!) paper to figure out new things. Go for variety.
Thing five. Baby yourself. It sounds silly, but act like a baby - if you feel anything at all, stop. Do other stuff until it feels better. Work slower. Use the mouse. Get creative with your bash history - anything to avoid more keystrokes.
Thing six. If it doesn't get better, or already hurts a lot, go to a doctor - go to your councillors - go to your dean - go to your attached medical school. You're in school dammit - get creative! Get help!
That's my $.02. Don't spend it all in one place.
Good luck.
I have one of these on my Xmas list, and I am certain i am going to get it. Has anyone had an experiences with it? Wrist pain go up, down, left, whatever?
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
What have we unleashed?! Are you truly the Unspeakable One? Were you recovering from RSI? Are you better now?
--still awaiting the return of our illustrious and glorius leader Meept!
The original Meept!! info lies here
If the pins and needles don't do it for ya try the the good ol' Carpal Tunnel Workshop.
Some of you probably remember this from 'The Corporation' website.
For typing, I keep about four inches or so away from the front edge of my desk. The weight of my hands rests on the bottom part of my palm, which allows me to arch my fingers (I have big hands) comfortably over the keyboard, while maintaining my usual typing pace (80wpm avg). When possible, I rest my elbows on armrests.
As for my mouse, I keep it and its pad very far away from the front of the desk. Basically, my arm rests flat on the desk almost to the elbow. I keep my mouse sensitivity turned way up so that I can reach any side of my desktop, even at high resolutions, by only moving my hand a few inches. Since my entire arm is supported, this position is quite comfy.
For FPS games however, I move the mouse forward a bit, so that about half of my fore-arm area is supported by the desk. This seems to be more effective for those trigger-reflex type games.
I'm interested in hearing what positions other people use to stay comfy.
Note: I don't use any ergo-stuff. I use the HP keyboard that came with my old 486 (still love it!), and a microsoft serial mouse (no wheel) for mousing.
The only wrist problems I have ever had I think I have to attribute to using the mouse. I tended to rest my hand on it and weight of my arm then went on my wrist, and so sometimes got pain in my right wrist (my left, non-mousing wrist was fine) which went away in a few days. In my opinion the mouse is a very bad device from an ergonomics standpoint, especially the act of clicking places a lot of stress on the tendons.
These days I have a laptop with a touchpad and haven't had any problems, the amount of force required to move the pointer around on a touchpad is much less than than to move a mouse around.
I also use a dvorak keyboard layout, which places far less stress on my wrists for typing - the debate on whether it really is faster aside, dvorak is subjectivly a much more comfortable way to type.
One seemingly minor change that I have found very nice is moving the backspace key from its far-flung position in the right corner - which forces you to either contort you wrist or move your whole arm to reach it - to the alt key to the left of the spacebar. Now deleting text is just a matter of holding down the left alt key with my left thumb, and I never have to leave the home row - faster and more comfortable. I haven't seen too many people who do this but even with a QWERTY keyboard it is a really good idea, I think.
And hey. Stop trying to make us go blind with the all caps. Just because using the CAPS LOCK key makes it less strainful, avoiding the shift key, doesn't make it ok.
Oh and by the way, ick.
Here's some RSI info to help you out.
The original Meept!! info lies here
When I learned typing years ago on one of the old DOS programs (Typing Tutor, I think), I was always taught to use the left hand for the 5 and the right hand for the 6, but the split keyboards have both the 5 and 6 on the left hand. I love the Microsoft keyboards and have been using them for years now, but this is still always guaranteed to trip me up now and then. Anybody know if typing is taught these days to use the left hand for both the 5 and the 6, or is this a Microsoft innovation?
Caveat emptor: There is one version of the MS split keyboard that has smaller arrow keys and the Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys are rearranged. Do not get this keyboard, because you'll never get used to the rearrangement.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
...is buy a wrist pad for your keyboard AND mouse. A lot of people only buy a keyboard pad and don't realize their mouse hand is doing the exact same thing. I used to get pains after playing too much quake, but as soon as I got a pad the pain went away. It's cheap and effective.
:P
If you have a 3M mousepad that won't work with a wrist-rest, do what I do: clip it on top of a pad that _does_ have a rest
I've been affected by RSI for around 3 years now. Initially, it got to the point where I could not type, mouse, drive, or even rest properly.
The thing to keep in mind is that once you notice the symptoms, your only recourse is to rest. Problem with RSI is your muscles and tendons will hurt more when they're resting if you have RSI. Bizarre and scary, but true.
My situation was helped by a sympathetic manager and doctor. Without either one, I probably would have lost my job. People at worker's compensation will do almost anything to either get you back to work or pay you off so you're no longer a liability.
Do not make a self diagnosis. Go to a doctor. But it is good to be knowledgable about RSI in general. A good book I can recommend is "Repetitive Strain Injury" by Pascarelli. I must apologize to its co-author because only the main author's name stick in my mind. This book was written by a doctor and a patient of his. A very excellent book, it covers stretching exercises you should do while you're resting, as well as descriptions of the various forms of RSI. I am not affiliated in any way to this book.
My keyboard of choice is the IBM options split keyboard. It is physically split and allows "tenting." Tenting just means you can tilt the various sides so that the keyboard's surface may conform more to your hand's neutral position. I cannot use a mouse anymore and prefer a trackball. With the IBM keyboard, the trackball sits between the two pieces of keyboard so I can use either hand when mousing. Getting a trackball with large buttons is important so you don't have to stress one finger to repeatedly press a button--rather you can use several and reduce the strain required. Sadly, IBM stopped making the options keyboard (also marketed by Lexmark) due to insufficient demand. All these things may sound like I'm over-reacting but RSI develops from accumulated strain over the years and won't go away overnight.
One thing I also want to stress is once you have RSI you shouldn't exercies the affected parts of your body until your body has adequately healed itself otherwise you'll be in worse shape than before.
Once you have RSI, you should try anything that you think will help. Everyone's body is different in how it reacts to various stimuli. What works for others may not work for you; what doesn't work for others may work for you.
Bill Joy uses emacs now.
Have a look at these - I'm using one and they really help out. Much better than the M$ ones.
I did an interview with Scott Wright, Webmaster and Primary Caretaker of the Typing Injury FAQ.
He answered these questions:
* What is the Typing Injury FAQ? What is your role?
* What are Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSIs)?
* What are the symptoms or signs of injury?
* What are the common causes or injury risks of RSIs?
* How can injuries be avoided? What are the best preventative measures?
* Are there special RSI considerations for Web users?
* How is Web design related to RSIs? For example, can Web sites be better designed to prevent RSIs?
You can find it on my site:
The Facts About Repetitive Strain Injuries
John S. Rhodes
New e-book --- http://webword.com/ebook.html
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How to Download YouTube Videos
It's a funky little gyroscope thingy that you get going and then use the gyroscopic force as resistance for wrist excercises. It's fun, geeky and good for you!
They claim it "is particularity effective in the rehabilitation and prevention of repetitive stress injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis or 'tennis elbow'." Like I said, I can't speak from experience, but it is fun.
Greg
-Nathan Whitehead
Various groups have now shown that there are substantial interactions between sensory representational abnormalities and loss of motor function in repetitive stress injuries. The emerging hypothesis is that in this most common type of dysfunction, attention and motor action cause sensory representations to become abnormal. This in turn tweeks motor feedback, which then worsens. This in turn causes further erosion of sensory representations. And so on. In the worst cases focal dystonia can result which NEVER GOES AWAY and NEVER GETS BETTER.
Unless the underlying sensory representation is restored.
But the bottom line is that once your hands begin to feel weird in a repetitive stress injury, continued use will lead you down the spiral towards loss of control. Stop, and take a break. And fairly soon effective sensory training will be able to reverse the negative effects of the repetitive movement.
Just thinking about this gives me Wristpain.
I miss him. ^_^
On another point: Didn't RSI injuries greatly increase at about the same time everyone started resting their wrists on wrist pads? Manual typewriters didn't have anywhere to rest. The only time I ever start to get wrist pain is when I get lazy and allow my wrists to touch the pad.
Just use proper technique and raise your wrists.
(Side note: This is the one good thing I've found about those crazy little 'hockey puck' mice that come with the new Macs. They work well to make you keep your wrist elevated.)
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
My method of avoiding RSI is simplicity itself. When my mom said `get your elbows off the dinner table', I ignored her. So now, I both eat and type with my elbows up on the table. The wrists are relaxed and in a natural-feeling position, and I have no pressure being applied to their insides like those who use wristpads. Of course, you have to push your monitor and keyboard back a foot or two, which no one around here except me seems to want to do ..
I'm not sure what Jamie's chiropractor is telling Jamie, but Kinesiology (the American term is "Kinesiotherapists"), as in the Bachelor of Science degree offered by universities, is the study of human movement. As the Kinesiology page from Laurentian University explains:
The Kinesiology approach to rehabilitation therapy is very much a "use it or lose it" approach; that is, the belief that the best therapy for those that can manage it is exercise. Kinesiologists "grow up" to become rehab therapists, ergonomists, and personal trainers, among other health and fitness-related occupations.
Kinesiology is not about weird New-Age modalities like "touch therapy"...
The best way to giving your wrists some rest, is getting some kind of good support. That way, you actually _rest_ them, instead of holding them up all the time. I think about any brand will work well (I have something called `Ergodyne WorkSmart', and it's _really_ comfortable). I think there are similiar things for your mouse, but in general, using keyboard shortcuts is what you should do anyway :-)
BTW, I think the page was nice, although I missed some suggestions. Good support and perhaps even changing your keyboard layout (which I've proposed before here on Slashdot) are relatively cheap things that gives a lot of effect.
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
Go to any ol' pharmacy and look for something called HANDEZE. It's an eight-dollar "golf glove"-looking thing with no fingers, made out of medical-grade lycra.
It traps heat and causes friction, both of which increase circulation in the hand and to the fingers. It's no substitute for stretching and resting, but if you work in a room that can get cold sometimes, it can help reduce minor soreness.
(Why do I have one? Well, I'm a diabetic, and we usually have poor circulation. And any doctor will tell you that poor circulation increases the damage done by RSI -- for that matter, the Typing Injury FAQ will tell you that, too.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I have a shoulder related RSI and bought a laptop with a touchpad and Dragon Naturally Speaking Professional. The keyboard has a very light action which helps and the touchpad is way better than using a mouse. The reason why I got a laptop is that speech recognition works best in a quiet environment[1] and I like to be able to move around, and also, sometimes my talking gets distracting for people around me; and there is also the privacy issue to consider. Moreover, once you trained your Dragon its quite an investment, so your play machine == work machine.
;) and all in all, I think I'm faster now than I was before I got ill, especially now that my hand has nearly healed up[3] and I can interleave a little typing with speaking where its handy.
I use the continuous speech program to write essays and letters etc., and for coding I use the discrete speech program together with XEmacs and lots of macros. I keep diffrent vocabularies for Perl, Java, LaTeX etc. Especially Lisp is great fun to code in with speech recognition!
This also works nicely with VNC[2], so, having to use Windows is bearable, esp since it can crash and my Linux desktops stays as it is. However, since I don't have MS Office installed, my laptop rarely if ever crashes.
I also mud with it (a great way of training your Dragon
Shariz
[1] Once your Dragon is trained, it works very well even if you have music on.
[2] VNC is great!
[3] I'm painfree, i.e its not keeping me awake at night anymore, _but_ if I overdo it I definitly feel it immediatly. I don't expect it to ever go away totally, but then I also think that typing a lot is unhealthy by definition -- a lot of people I know have problems, and I think that we need to get round to thinking that typing 8 hours+ a day is simply not on!
RSIs are not usually just from posture, but is from many things combined.
RSI injured geek wins against Mattel, Mattel still retaliates!
We're trying to save up to get one for her at home, too...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
DVORAK is the future! Why are you typing on a keyboard designed to strain you?!
$loadkeys dvorak NOW!
Most sigs are dumb. This is one of them.
I started going to Tai Chi class twice a week for an hour at a time. It is good about stretching the back, shoulders, arms, wrists, and fingers in very subtle ways. Within a month, I forgot that I ever had mouse elbow and sore wrists.
It's also low impact. No sweat, no problem.
AND I can now kick some ass. (At least that's what they tell me.)
I had numbness, tingling, and pain on the outside half of my left hand. It turns out that I'd bumped my elbow against something while moving furniture and injured the nerve that runs from the neck down to the outside part of the hand. Ibuprofen and avoiding leaning on my elbows or etc., and lots of time (six weeks before the tingling started going down) solved the problem, thank god (my doctor had said if it didn't, probably the nerve had been jolted out of its channel and I'd probably need surgery), but the point is that pain isn't ALWAYS caused where it occurs. -E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
A friend of mine had this _other_ funny strange theory about RSI; having gotten a rather bad case of it (RSI, not theory) from trying to switch between proper piano and synth keyboards. After he wrecked his wrists bad enough to give up playing for several years, he did some research on the topic and noted one tiny little detail that he decided makes all the difference: The synth sounds at the bottom of the keystroke, and the piano sounds partway thorugh. Since he learned piano first, he was trying to drive the synth keys past their sounding point, in effect, past their end of travel.
o ntacts keyswitch; and the CEMCORP Icon (remember that?), which had a put-a-ferrite-bead-through-two-coils mechanism. Both allowed extra travel at the end of the keystroke, but without the benefit of the tactile (and acoustic) feedback from IBM's proper keyboards. (There may be an IBM logo on this keyboard, but after just a couple of days with it I'm already feeling pain in my fingers. We hates it we do.)
I've noticed a similar thing. The IBM Click-o-Matic keyboards send the keysequence partway down; so after you hear the click, you've got some (seemingly) useless key travel, which lets your finger stop without hitting something. The two keyboards I "grew up" with the most had a similar, though quiet, mechanism: the Amiga, with a weird move-the-plastic-doohickey-out-from-between-two-c
Most modern keyboards are descendents of the PET rubber-widget-hitting-a-contact-pad (okay, my history is biased) family, only without honest springs... just a stupid rubber cup that would be more at home on a remote control. Of course, the key doesn't activate until the rubber bit hits the circuit board; and you've got all that inertia to do something with. (And so many of these have weak contacts... so you almost have to smash at them. That's fine for the junk-shop special on the router, but has no place on a serious keyboard.)
The point being: No matter how you hold your wrists, if you smash your fingers down on a hard surface all day, your hands are going to hurt.
Rubber-dome keyboards: Just Say No.
IMHO, the best way to avoid RSI injuries is to build up strong fingers and wrists.
I wrote an article on how to accomplish this for another story here.
BTW, for spine health I recommend bridging and proper posture (shoulders back, head back, chin tucked, back straight; many bad slouch-encouraging chairs become excellent chairs with the addition of a small cushion behind your hips and lower back, and of course your monitor should be at eye level). Also, deadlifts rule as a whole-body exercise for rapid and dramatic results.
The easiest beginners bridge is to lie on your back with your feet flat on the floor (obviously you have to bend your knees for that), and just raise your butt up off the floor. This works the buttocks, thighs, and lower back, but not very much. A more advanced and productive bridge is to start in the same position, and bridge up on alternate shoulders, striving to roll yourself over that shoulder (if you actually do roll yourself right over, stop that! ^_^' I mean hug something heavy across your abdomen, like a big sack of potatos or a duffle bag full of books).
Another extremely useful "bridge" is the dand, a staple exercise of Indian wrestlers. I recommend that it be done rather than any sit-up or crunch. You get down on all fours with legs and arms straight and your butt up in the air, then alternately push forward, arching your back and neck while lowering your butt, and pull backward, curling your abs and chin in while raising your butt. A useful advanced variant is the judo pushup (mostly for more emphasis on the shoulders and arms) which resembles a dand except that in the "arching" phase you bend your arms and knees to put your nose to the ground, rub it along the floor (well, actually you'd be 1/2 inch above it or so) for as far as you can reach, then straightening your arms and arching your spine before doing the normal dand curling-up phase. Just do as many dands as you can every second day and you'll have a spine like a teenage gymnast when you're in your eighties.
Neck bridges are incredibly useful, not just for your neck but for the length of your spine, but you must be very careful, especially when you are starting out. Remember to warm up carefully: bridge to the front first, putting your forehead on the mat and supporting most of your weight on your hands (and keep your knees off the floor). Gently and slowly rock back and forth, going a little further each time until you finish by stretching your neck with your nose to the mat, then your chin to your chest. Very gently stretch to the sides, too; this is the most dangerous part, take extra care to control the weight with your arms. Now get up and bridge to your back; use your arms to lift yourself into and out of position and also to control the weight on your neck (after a few weeks or months you may become strong enough not to use your arms at all, like a wrestler, but be very cautious at all times). Arch straight back as hard as you can (but with careful control), straightening your legs and turning your body into a wheel that can't quite roll over, then relax and bend your knees to return to the starting position. Once you are strong in this movement you will go so far that your nose touches the mat. Repeat this arch ten or twenty times, then arch once more and see how long you can hold it. After than, do another front bridge and rock back and forth again to finish off your neck, gradually using your arms for support more and more as your neck tires, finally finishing with one last four-way stretch like you started with.
Finish the exercise for your neck with some standing exercise: apply manual resistance as you tilt your head towards the shoulder, first one side then the other, then with no resistance turn your head alternately to the right and left as far as it will go. Having pre-exhausted the major muscles of the neck in its strongest movement, these exercises strengthen the neck in its other movements.
You can also do gymnastic bridges (back bridge on hands and feet with legs straight as possible), but these are more of an extreme stretch than anything, and I don't recommend them.
BTW, if you do many exercises for the front of your shoulders and chest, your shoulders will start to pull forward and ruin your posture because of muscle imbalances. Remember to stretch your shoulders and chest. You must also balance the muscle development out with upper back strength: lying on your back, grab hold of something above you (some chairs work, or a rope around a table, or a friend can stand over you and you can hold his arms) and pull yourself up, with your grip at shoulder width and your palms facing up.
ABTW, use a nice soft surface for head bridging (duh).
One more thing, make sure your spine is straight when you sleep. IMHO the best sleeping posture is flat on your back on a firm bed with your feet raised (supported behind the calves) and a very small pillow moulded around your neck (and, for some people, a very small thin cushion, such as a folded towel, under your lower back). Sleeping on your side is good in a fairly soft bed with two pillows and a third pillow between your knees (especially for women, the wider your hips, the more important that pillow is), but this can easily lead to shoulder problems, especially for men with broad shoulders.
I'm not sure which Adesso jwz was talking about (because jwz.org is currently slashdotted), but I own the plain Adesso TruForm keyboard. I got it because it had the best layout I'd seen: a big backslash key ABOVE the Enter key; no big, stupid, L-shaped Enter key; full-size navigational keys (ever use the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn pad on a smaller-size M$-Natural keyboard? It sucks.); and the keyboard "feet" could prop up the FRONT of the keyboard instead of the back. Honestly, I do not understand why everyone has to prop up the BACK end of a keyboard; if anything, that makes the ergonomics WORSE. Why? Because people have a tendency to rest their wrists on the table in front of the keyboard. Propping up the back of the keyboard means they have to pull up their hands and fingers up even further to type, which is bad. Do this sometime: Put your wrists on the table in front of you, pivot your hands up to about 45 degrees, and lift your fingers a little. See all that stuff popping out the top of your hand? I'm pretty sure that's not good for you.
Anyway, that Adesso keyboard is currently sitting unused in the corner of my room. The reason is that the quality is a big disappointment. In the first month I had that thing, the "D" keycap broke off. Since then, the "E" key, the "Ctrl" key, and the "Enter" keys have broken off. Be warned. I'm not so sure these bendy ergo keyboards do that much anyway. If you want to avoid hand/wrist pain, one major thing to do is just make sure you keep your hands and wrists above the table. Try to keep your wrists flat relative to your arms. My previous boss told my it's like playing the piano. This should help with typing on a normal keyboard.
ccg
This is probably a Pandora's box we don't want to open, but I did take the opportunity provided by learning Dvorak to program myself to use both shift keys. In QWERTY, I used only the right shift key, but I started using both after I switched layouts. (I love Dvorak, but let's not go there at the moment. It helps to have a privlaged login to the local computer lab so I can change keyboard settings when necessary...)
Ok maybe punching would be a bit much but the way I type is to use my shoulders and elbows a lot to take the stress off using my wrists for the same motion. With practice you can type just as fast with much less stress and hey you get a good workout. The only downside is keyboards tend to wear out pretty fast. Or try my new solution and don't type so much. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Whilst on the subject of RSI and computer keyboards, there is something that I have noticed in my piano playing :
I like to play jazz piano, I mean *lots* of jazz. Anyway one of the pieces I really like to improvise around is "Take Five" by Paul Desmond of the Dave Brubeck quartet. The piece has a difficult left hand riff which involves constant stretching over the notes. Whilst I am doing this, the left hand is constantly stretched hard.
Now I carry on improvising for a good twenty minutes. I get up and my left hand is really throbbing... fair enough, lactic acid and the like.
However, after learning this piece for a week, playing twice a day kind of thing, my hand and stretching right up to my arm would really ache. We're talking real noticable pain here.
It took me a good few weeks to link the two.
D'oh.
I would like to point out that he was being funny. I got a good chuckle out of that, and damnit, I'm a sufferer too. I'm fighting my own fight against RSI (and I'm 17, sucks to be me).
Anyway, reread it, see the authors attempt at humor, have a chuckle. Have a nice day.
Jeff
I was experiencing pain in my right wrist for several months, sometimes severe pain. I didn't think it was from typing, since it was only affecting the one wrist, and it seemed to get worse after using the mouse for a while. Finally I moved the mouse to the left side of the keyboard, changed the settings in the OS, and started learning how to use the mouse left-handed.
:/
Now I can use the mouse with my left hand as well as I could with my right, and the pain hasn't been bothering me since. But I'm online a lot (especially in IRC) and do a lot of typing, so I won't be surprised if my wrists start bothering me again eventually
My hands are getting strained and tired of having to lift my hands off the 50 lb original IBM keyboard to move the mouse around.
So I was wondering, are there any alternative keyboards available that can be used with a POWERstation 370?
It would be even better if I could use a combination keyboard/mouse.
It looks like the connector on the box is a PS/2 jack, but I wasn't sure what would happen if I attached a combo keyboard/mouse from a PC.
Thanks for any help
-----Transmission Complete----- If you want to email me...Don't
I have had on and off near-debilitating pain and stiffness in the mouse hand and forearn for a year or so, but I have now found a physiotherapist who has (correctly, I think) identified the problem in an imbalance of muscules in my right shoulder, which ends up pinching nerves and causing all kinds of havoc in my arm.
Stretching, limbering up, and getting some muscle tone back in the shoulderblades is working wonders.
Remember, geeks, your hands are not the only muscles in your body!
My cousin had severe wrist/hand pain and was diagnosed & treated for RSI. This did not work and eventually she was referred to a consultant who told her that it was her back/neck that was causing the pain in her wrists. Since being treated for this, her pain has got better. So not all wrist pain is RSI.
Someone mentioned stretching exercises. I would also highly recommend these as they do seem to help enormously with this kind of pain. Stress also seems to increase pain, so do some stress-reducing activities too.
HH
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
3 years ago I had severe pains for 2 months due to PowerBuilder "programming" (clicking to death).
Then I changed to this mouse: http://www.animax.no/
Worked wonders for me.
I had arm problems four years ago. I got them about once a year and they lasted for a month. I never knew what caused them and what helped. I just knew that I'll heal. Until the last time of course when I got it twice a year and it lasted 3-4 months. Even when I rested, it just didn't heal and I grew desperate after doctors couldn't do anything.
In the end a doctor told me: "What I find in you is not really anything. But if resting doesn't help, then how about using your arms?" He told me to start working again, do some heavy with my arms and exercise. Needless to say that I was shocked.
But I tried it. I started throwing the shot put and my arms did heal in a few days. Since then I've been doing weight training regularly and haven't had any problems whatsoever.
Here's what's bad to your arms. If you have a wrist support in front of your keyboard, don't rest your hands on it when you type. That way your arms are not moving enough. I nowadays put the rest under the fron of the keyboard so that it's impossible for me to rest my arms on anything while typing. Also don't be too careful to type. Our arms are made for heavy work, so they don't take small repetitive movement as well.
But I can't stress enough how important it is to exercise. If you just sit by the keyboard all day and don't do any sports, your muscles are going to get smaller until you get problems. If you exercise and have stronger muscles, your arms are going to take anything. You can see it in the construction workers. Their work contains a lot of repetitive movements but they don't have arm problems like we do.
Now, if you do have bad pain already, don't run to abuse your arms by typing along. If you can take heavy housework, do it. But talk to your doctor about this first as your case may be worse than mine was. And all you healthy ones, go lift some heavy weights to keep yourself healthy.
Well resting your palms when you type is a definite no-no. Your arms are not getting enough movement and the blood circulation is bad. Also you risk getting CTS because of all the static movement that your finger movement causes on the carpal tunnel.
Resting your elbows is ok, though. But don't restrict the natural movement of your hands.
Only 6 posts separate a carpal report from a masturbation joke. Neat, 6 degrees of freedom are found in a lot of joysticks. Damn you Eris, what happened to 5?
Malachi
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
About four years ago, I was suffering through terrible wrist pain. I was working days on a computer-tech internship, and at night, I was editing and writing for my college newspaper. Mondays through Thursdays, I was often at a keyboard for over 12 hours a day.
I was definitely scared, because I did some research and I realized how bad things could get for me if I didn't make some changes. I started stetching and taking timed breaks, and perhaps most importantly, began taking my hands off the keyboard whenever possible.
Also, and this was tough, I gave up playing computer games.
The next two years, things went pretty well. I had occasional pain, but never as bad as at the peak. Then, in summer 1997, I bought a ComforType keyboard gadget.
It changed my life.
What it is, is a tray for your keyboard with two sliding arms in front. On each sliding arm is a contoured pad for your hand. You rest your hand on these pads it feels like they're floating over the keyboard.
Yes, it looks a bit silly, and it's not cheap (about $200). But it fucking works like magic. You know how they say you're not supposed to rest your palms on the desk or even on a wrist rest? Nice in theory, but impossible for long sessions at a terminal, in my experience. This is what the ComforType does for you.
It took me less than a day to get used to. It works on standard keyboards. And I have had no wrist pain for two years, despite using the keyboard more than ever.
I know $200 sounds like a lot for a goofy-looking gadget, but I'd pay twice that to replace mine if I needed to.
- Gruber
Yep. Quake is the thing that did me too. Sustained playing for 2-6 or so hours 3 or 4 times a week really started to tell on my fingers and wrists (up till then I had been touch typing for 10 years or so). After that I got pain every day for about a week even after only about 1/2 hour game. Not really got back into it... Wondering if I should now we have Q3A...