Repetitive Stress Injury and Computer Usage

Repetitive stress injury is one of a group of injuries that are caused solely by a person’s neglect to their own welfare, if you look after yourself then you will likely not fall victim to this painful condition.

It's been the computer age for awhile now, and that's why words like repetitive stress injury and carpal tunnel syndrome are a part of our everyday lexicon now. Most families use a computer at least for some reason every day.

This could be for work, for school homework, checking e-mail, surfing the Internet, instant messaging with friends or playing computer games.

People's lives are impacted by computers every day from the very young to the not so young person. And as a consequence, the occurrence of repetitive stress injuries caused by hours in front of those computer keyboards also has increased.

If you know you'll be spending time on a computer for work or play each day, there are some things you should know about carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries caused by our extensive time in front of the computer screen.

We risk injuring the small tunnel that is formed by the bones and ligaments in your wrists when we use a computer, particularly the mouse, repetitively. This tunnel serves as protection for the nerves that send messages between your brain and your hand.

When this area is injured because of too much Internet surfing or shooting monsters in a video game, you can experience some level of pain, tingling and perhaps even numbness.

It's not likely we can give up our computer time altogether, but there are ways to help lessen your likelihood of experiencing the painful results of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Preventing repetitive stress injury in computer users

• To prevent repetitive stress injury you first need to take the correct posture needed to carry out computer work correctly, your posture is paramount to combating repetitive stress injury. First you need to look at ergonomics to make sure your posture is correct, ergonomics is the applied science used in the development of computer equipment to reduce the users fatigue and injury and increase productivity.
• Make sure you press the keyboard keys and mouse buttons softly, if you are needlessly pressing buttons too hard then you risk adding stress to your fingers and wrists increasing the possibility of injury.
• Using ergonomics will show you that your monitor should be straight ahead and at eye level, your legs should be at right angles so your chair height may need adjusting, and most importantly your arms need to rest comfortably on the desk and your fingers must be in easy reach of the keyboard and mouse so you don’t stress your hands.
• Another important factor to preventing repetitive stress injury is to take regular breaks, it may sound like common sense but when you get engrossed with something on the Internet or that report you need to get completed it is easy to forget.
• Try to keep your hands and wrists relaxed so you do not build up tension causing an increased risk of injury.
• If the pain persists talk to your manager or human resources at work who may be able to provide a better alternative so you don’t have to suffer.

Overall repetitive stress injury can be quite painful, if you do not seek advice to alleviate the issue you can cause further damage, after all repetitive stress injury is really an injury caused by applying too much stress to an area.