Sat, Apr 04, 20
On a mission to prevent Repetitive Strain Injuries
Since the early ages of humankind, the very early ancestors of Homo genus needed their hands to survive in the Wild. And if those were injured, it easily could have led to death. But the Evolution and Technology Development increased so rapidly and in the last 30 years, our daily routines have changed a lot. So much, it already imposed effects on our health.
If you are reading this, congrats to yourself. You are one among the ones who can afford electronic devices and have access to Internet. Not everyone in this World can.
But can you abstain from Electronics from at least a day, not checking every 10 minutes how and where is everyone else? Pretty hard must say, right? Almost every aspect of our life is affected with electronics. Computers, cell phones, and even more computers …
Within such fast development, our bodies were not able to adapt to the mostly sedentary lifestyle and computer use.
Have you ever had some pain in your fingers due to texting/typing too much? How about pain in your wrist or wrist getting swollen? Or not to mention some tingling. The common word to describe these dysfunctionalities are Repetitive strain injuries(RSI). Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Tendinitis, Cubital Tunnel Syndrome, Trigger Finger, Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, etc. They are caused because of too much work. No kidding. You may apply too much pressure, or work without any brakes, or have worked in bad condition. Or you haven’t thought about Ergonomics. Really important principles but not many workers neither Managers are putting any attention. We will come to that in the upcoming posts.
Young, dumb and with carpal tunnel syndrome
Living in the early 20’s, you still have all your life in front of you and you are convinced that nothing can really happen. Therefore you are putting all you can and giving your best every day. That is really good recipe for things to go wrong.
It began first with some light pain in the fingers. “So what!” we said and continued with our work at computer (it includes also playing computer games, fyi). It did not stop and slowly, the pain increased. So we wait for a while, got our hands shaken for a bit, and continued on.
The pain alleviated while sleeping, but in the next morning when getting back at the computer, it came back after an hour. “That’s impossible! I is not happening to me! I am not getting old or what?!” So we decided to do our Google research and found out that we are on our way to develop RSI.
How to heal RSI? — Not doing anything. But that’s not possible, right? Also, some medication is not the best solution, especially for the long-term. So we did more research on the Internet and found some nice splints and wrist bands. Great, but that is not useful while you are typing on a keyboard and clicking a computer mouse. “What about some mouse pads with wrist rest?” — Possible. We bought them a dozen, but no one was really helping us. So we were tired of all other products and made a commitment to ourselves to create the most ergonomic wrist rest on our own … (to be continued)
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