One thing that I don't think has yet been mentioned is getting a good keyboard tray. It's virtually impossible to have correct posture if your keyboard is at the wrong level, and raising/lowering your chair won't necessarily help, because that, of course, changes your posture. If it's financially possible, buy a high-end keyboard tray -- something that adjusts smoothly up and down, left and right, and tilts on a horizontal axis.
I had a pretty bad bout of RSI last year, and the keyboard tray did wonders (as did all the other suggestions above -- ergonomic keyboard, using voice-recogntion for chatting and email, more exercise, etc) Take your time with it and make lots of little adjustments -- change a habit here and there, fiddle with this and that. As most honest doctors will attest, RSIs are different in every person, so the remedies are also maddeningly different. What works for me won't necessarily work for you. Just be patient and don't give up until you hit a combination that works; it took me nine months.
But the biggest single help is simply to take time away from the keyboard. Workaholism may be good for our careers and stimulating for our minds but it's just *murder* on our bodies, if we fly keyboards all day. Take the weekend off, and quit your job if your employers get pissed off. If they have a scrap of intelligent self-interest they'll realize it's better to have you regularly getting time away from work than to be off on a sick leave for months.
Re: surgery -- I'm a writer, with lots of friends in medical journalism who have themselves wrestled with RSIs. They told me to avoid surgery at all costs. Apparently it rarely does anything particularly good and can actually make things worse. This is not to say that physical therapy doesn't work -- acupuncture gets high marks, from what I've heard, as do various forms of excercise.
But the painful truth is that our jobs are hazardous to our health when they are practised *precisely as intended*. We gotta grapple with that or we'll all wind up in chronic pain.
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Heya -- Clive here. Nope, I'm not related to Jack Thompson! Though it would pretty interesting if I were, eh? Heh.
One thing that I don't think has yet been mentioned is getting a good keyboard tray. It's virtually impossible to have correct posture if your keyboard is at the wrong level, and raising/lowering your chair won't necessarily help, because that, of course, changes your posture. If it's financially possible, buy a high-end keyboard tray -- something that adjusts smoothly up and down, left and right, and tilts on a horizontal axis.
I had a pretty bad bout of RSI last year, and the keyboard tray did wonders (as did all the other suggestions above -- ergonomic keyboard, using voice-recogntion for chatting and email, more exercise, etc) Take your time with it and make lots of little adjustments -- change a habit here and there, fiddle with this and that. As most honest doctors will attest, RSIs are different in
every person, so the remedies are also maddeningly different. What works for me won't necessarily work for you. Just be patient and don't give up until you hit a combination that works; it took me nine months.
But the biggest single help is simply to take time away from the keyboard. Workaholism may be good for our careers and stimulating for our minds but it's just *murder* on our bodies, if we fly keyboards all day. Take the weekend off, and quit your job if your employers get pissed off. If they have a scrap of intelligent self-interest they'll realize it's better to have you regularly getting time away from work than to be off on a sick leave for months.
Re: surgery -- I'm a writer, with lots of friends in medical journalism who have themselves wrestled with RSIs. They told me to avoid surgery at all costs. Apparently it rarely does anything particularly good and can actually make things worse. This is not to say that physical therapy doesn't work -- acupuncture gets high marks, from what I've heard, as do various forms of excercise.
But the painful truth is that our jobs are hazardous to our health when they are practised *precisely as intended*. We gotta grapple with that or we'll all wind up in chronic pain.