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Comment by sebastienrocks | Hacker News Reader

I personally have had some huge wrist pains recently (I do have a doctors appointment planned to check that out).

This caused me some great stress because I am an avid gamer, and also a developer.

Knowing that there are solutions, really reassures me, at least for my day job.

The thing that helped me the most was realizing that my pain might not be located at the problem site. I had a nerve impingement due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoracic_outlet_syndrome which was causing wrist pain, even though nothing was wrong with my wrists at all.

Physical therapy can help a lot.

Professional advice is a good idea.

One suggestion that helped for an acquaintance: if it's RSI from typing on a standard keyboard, but isn't too severe, switch to a fancy split ergonomic keyboard (provided that's different to what you currently use), change the key layout to Dvorak, throw away your existing typing habits and slowly learn to touch type again.

Another relative was diagnosed with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpal_tunnel_syndrome . Surgery can help.

Also, switch to a trackball instead of a mouse. I'm not terribly sensitive to RSI (I've worked data entry jobs where I sometimes spent 12 hours a day 6 days a week typing), even so I've found that using a regular mouse for a full day of work is one of the easiest ways to get RSI. I switched to using a trackball maybe 10 years ago and it's very noticeable how much it improves things.

My wife went through a lot of work to find ergonomics to mitigate RSI. In the end:

1. Adjustable desk height. 2. tried several keboards before settling on the best split. 3. tried several mice.

all helped, but... symptoms were also confusingly intermingled with a pinched nerve. PT helps that. See a doctor, yes, and also keep your mind open to other/multiple confounding causes.

You may want to keep an eye out for the Xbox Adaptive Controller for games [1]

[1] https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/accessories/controllers/...

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