Poll: How do you combat RSI? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: How do you combat RSI?

After reading Zed Shaws post on health issues, I think it might be a good idea to see how we all actuallydo at self-help.

Please vote only once for each group (I do this / I don't do this).

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I started experiencing RSI in 1998 as an upperclassman in college, and experienced extreme flare-ups in 2001,2002 in grad school while doing an internship at NASA. I'd spend a week+ doing low-activity computer/console use to make the pain go away but then a couple of high-intensity days could undo weeks of healing. I started to wonder how long it would be before I would do irreparable harm, and how long until I needed surgery. I started visiting doctors and even went for a round of treatments with an occupational therapist. And of course I Googled about posture, treatments, etc.

Here’s what I’ve learned about my circumstances, Your mileage WILL vary—the key is understanding your wrists.

Heavy use of Emacs and control keys that makes me bend fingers into weird positions make it worse. Holding a PS2 game controller badly makes it worse. Writing and editing prose is worse than programming as it requires me to do more typing--things got really bad when I was writing my dissertation all day seven days a week. Using the mouse for long periods of time without breaks is bad. Marathon playing of FPS is bad, using a mouse or controller is bad because there are no breaks built in. Bending my wrists down from neutral for long periods of time is worst.

From 2002 to 2009 I managed my injury with the following.

1. Lots and lots of Advil. Taking it as a preventative before I feel the pain is much better than taking it when I feel the pain as the inflammation is already there and then it takes longer to recover. It’s disgusting how many times different doctors just recommended me Advil, or the 800mg tablets if I asked nicely. A couple times they gave me a script for other anti-inflammatory meds, but they worked barely better than Advil so I usually didn’t go back to get the refill. (Advil seems to work better for me than Aleve, though it does require more pills.)

2. Learned the Dvorak layout. I’m a true touch-typist now and my fingers don’t work as much.

3. Became ambidextrous with my mouse. I’ve got two mouse-pads and the mouse switches between them throughout the day. I don’t even notice when I switch it over.

4. Wear the full-size RSI wrist braces at night. I noticed that I often rest my hands on my body in my sleep so the wrists bent downwards and would go numb. Sleep is the best time for healing and I was sabotaging my time to heal, and maybe even making things worse.

5. Always wear braces when typing or mousing. One doc pointed me at WrisTimer https://www.brownmed.com/Products/StoreProductDetail29.cfm?S... which work well, look cool, and doesn’t make me look like a cripple in the office like the standard ones do.

6. Use a typing-break timer and do stretches, get water, whatever, when it goes off. Don’t get in the habit of cheating.

7. Get an ergo keyboard. I think the Kinesis Professional QD Contoured is great, and love the location of the control keys under the thumb but the ancient PS/2 version I’ve got doesn’t work with my USB-keyboard computer even with an adapter. Since the wells of the Contoured keyboard are too high on my new office desk to keep my wrists in a neutral position, I switched to a Kinesis Freestyle. It’s okay, but I had to find my own way to angle the keyboard to the right height.

8. Adjust the keyboard, monitor and desk so my wrist and arms are comfortable. The braces were also useful to let me know when your posture or finger reaches were too extreme. I think my natural habits are better now.

9. Do not, do not, use a laptop touchpad, or the laptop keyboard for more than an hour or so at a time. Get an external mouse and an external keyboard for any extended work. If I feel pinching, or itching, or soreness I’m asking for trouble if I push through it.

10. A side effect of changing jobs is that I don't use Emacs much, and the new IDE (Eclipse, then Visual Studio) lets me use the mouse more. I think using fewer hot-key combos helped me.

After grad school I worked at a 50hr/wk job and I always wore the WrisTimers and took anti-inflammatories l as necessary, usually for a few days at a time. Over time my wrists healed up so I wore the braces out of habit and from fear of a recurrence. Since 2009, I’m at a 40hr/wk job and been able to not wear my braces at night or at work, though I can feel aches if I push too hard.

Time to grab a soda, and give my wrist a few minutes break as my left seems to want a break from writing this prose. I’ll use the mouse with my right hand for the next hour or so while I get back to coding.

Good luck.

Short answer: I wear wrist braces to sleep (I just use some weight-lifting gloves with velcro wrist-straps).

Back story:

About a year or two back, I was working long hours and started to develop wrist pain. At the time, I 'asked' google the same question and came upon a recommendation (can't remember where to give credit) to wear wrist braces when sleeping.

I didn't really think about it again until a couple of weeks later when I woke up with my head resting on my hand and my wrist bent back underneath it. I started wearing braces to bed and the problem I'd been dealing with for a couple of months was pretty much gone in a week and a half.

When I start to feel any pain in my wrists, I start wearing wrist braces. It seems that -- in my case, at least -- wrist pain is provoked largely by radial deviation; wrist braces force me to keep my wrist straight (and to instead move my entire forearm) and prevents this.

(For what it's worth, it took me over a year to figure out which particular motion was causing the pain.)

I've found that the mouse is the major culprit in any discomfort I might feel. I've cut down this discomfort to almost none by embracing keyboard shortcuts and accessibility options that only use the keyboard. This was actually easier on windows than it is on osx with the menu accelerators turned on, but I learn new tricks every week :)

I almost forgot! Do not compromise on correct desk and chair height. I one had a CEO/owner who was neurotic about the neatness of the office and having several desks next to each other that were not adjusted to the same height seemed to her like it was sloppy and unprofessional. With people with a range of heights in the room, clearly one desk height does not fit all. It took a little time and some research, but after educating her on why personalized desk height is a necessity and not a luxury, she came around, even if it was grudgingly.

I switched CTRL key with CAPSLOCK, it helped me to overcome wrist pain. It is good example for people who use vim/emacs, browser shortcuts, terminal, etc. a lot.

Just use the command below to change it. At first, it is hard, but when you get used to it, you will see the difference.

setxkbmap -option ctrl:swapcaps

I position my hands comfortably so the wrist is in a comfortable natural position. This means always working on a keyboard which top is aligned with my wrist (by using a gel pad).

Flat out refuse to use a keyboard without it. Kept me out of wrist braces for years now.

I use a Kinesis Freestyle split keyboard.

I switched to Dvorak. Now I am trying to switch to 2 finger typing

I don't read this thread and shut my computer off

I took gelatin supplements for a long time to help my tendon problems. Later, I worked on my general health. For me, it appears that wrist pain was really caused by some form of infection. Getting healthier has largely made this problem go away, in spite of the fact that I have had a couple of significant injuries (from sports and a fall) to the tendons and ligaments in my dominant arm. I do sometimes get sore. But I no longer wind up in so much pain that I am impaired in functioning.

I use workrave & Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 and MS Natural Mouse 6000. My exp with RSI http://www.codelathe.com/blog/index.php/2008/09/30/out-of-ac...

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