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RSS Subscribe: My AOL, MyYahoo, Bloglines, Google A Personal Battle With RSI, From Ergonomics to PatchouliSeven years ago, while working at a job that entailed cutting and pasting vast swathes of text for hours on end, I began to feel a wide range of aching, burning and numbing sensations in my hands and arms. I was eventually diagnosed with tendonitis, lateral epicondylitis and carpal tunnel syndrome: a classic case of computer-related repetitive strain injury, or RSI. It's a widespread problem. According to an RSI study published last year by medical journal The Lancet, some countries report prevalence rates as high as 10 percent, rising to 40 percent in specific working populations. After I was diagnosed with the problem, I placed my trust entirely in ergonomic office equipment and rigorous physical therapy to return me to my former, pain-free self. And why not? A self-described rationalist, I firmly believed in the power of technology and conventional medicine, and I was deeply skeptical of anything that hadn't been proven in a clinical trial. Yet I eventually learned that very little has been clinically proven to help with RSI, a finding highlighted in the Lancet study that has until now only been fully appreciated by RSI sufferers like myself. The bottom line: There's no one-size-fits-all treatment for RSI. After spending lots of time and a good deal of money trying ergonomic devices in the early phase of my injury, I wound up responding better to the alternative practices I had originally spurned than to the ergo-gadgetry and physical therapy in which I had initially placed such faith. Here's how I discovered how to manage my RSI using touchy-feely alternative therapies. Gadgets, Gear and Adjustable EverythingToward the beginning of my battle with RSI, I had a professional ergonomist visit my apartment to help me design the perfect home office -- one that would allow me to maintain comfortable postures and joint positions with minimal stress and strain. Toward that end, I acquired:
By the time I was finished, I had nearly absolute control over the height, angle and distance at which I placed my hands and arms while typing. I also had a heavily modified desk that was held together with rubber bands and duct tape. And I was still in considerable pain. Can You Hear Me Now?That's when I seized with fresh desperation on my next techno-crutch: voice-recognition software. Having been a Windows person when I was injured, I opted for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. (As a Mac convert, I now use MacSpeech Dictate.) Unfortunately, despite tremendous advances, transcription software still isn't perfect. NaturallySpeaking and Dictate share the same speech engine, and both claim up to 99 percent accuracy. I never come close, however -- perhaps because I have a 3-year-old trampling around my home office, jabbering away in close proximity to my headset. Voice-recognition software comes with significant costs attached. So if you choose to go this route, bear in mind:
The Stretching CureErgonomic equipment and voice recognition made up half of my initial rehab program. The rest consisted of physical therapy, which came in two basic flavors:
Some RSI sufferers respond well to physical therapy. I, alas, did not. After a year of treatment and no real progress, I began to feel that I had fallen prey to an insidious RSI-industrial complex. With the encouragement of several well-meaning medical professionals and a raft of online FAQs and help forums, I had become fixated on the notion that if only I could find the right physical therapy regimen, ergonomic setup or software tool, I would be cured. Yet no amount of stretching or tweaking seemed to help. So when my HMO decided to stop paying for my sessions, I stopped going -- to no discernible effect. Luckily, by then I'd already figured out which approaches were genuinely helpful to me. And they were the very ones that I had initially mocked. Stop and Smell the PatchouliWhen I first began treatment, I recoiled at anything associated with alternative medicine. However, nothing broadens the mind like constant pain, and I soon found myself trying every alternative remedy on the market. To my great surprise, I had considerable success with so-called somatic practices that helped me use my body more efficiently and with less unnecessary muscular tension. Examples include:
Seven years on, I wouldn't say that I'm quite back to my old self. I still have flare-ups, and I'm far more prone to aches and pains than I was before I was injured. But I'm fully functional. I alternate between talking to my laptop and typing in a variety of postures that would make my ergonomist and physical therapist cringe. And I keep myself relatively pain-free simply by staying fit and going for the occasional Alexander Technique lesson. I'm not suggesting that everyone with sore arms and carpal tunnel syndrome do as I did. As the Lancet study suggests, there's really no telling what will help a particular RSI sufferer. But I suppose that's the point: In the absence of definitive proof for any one course of treatment, it pays to keep an open mind.
Posted: 8/18/2008 2:00:40 PM |
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