Ergonomics And YouBy Nicole Stevenson [Health & Your Life]
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What simple desk side change can save your neck tons of trouble? Nicole Stevenson shows you how to avoid the most common office injuries.  Wrist Ah, carpal tunnel syndrome: the most common of the office injuries. Even if you’ve never experienced this painful inflammation of the wrist, you’ve definitely heard of it. Caused most often by the seemingly harmless mouse attached to your computer, carpal tunnel syndrome occurs when ligaments and tendons in the wrist become swollen and press against the median nerve, causing pain. The pain occurs mostly around the thumb, index and middle finger and may worsen at night. You may also experience numbness and tingling sensations in the same areas. When your job requires you to make the same hand movements over and over, particularly when those movements involve gripping or pinching, you become susceptible to carpal tunnel. Spending an entire day with a hand planted firmly on a poorly positioned computer mouse can cause agonizing pain later on. To alleviate or prevent symptoms, avoid pinching or gripping the mouse, switch mouse hands occasionally if possible, take breaks or switch tasks to give your hand a rest and rest your fingers on the buttons of the mouse rather than hovering over them. Make sure that you don’t sit too close to your computer and mouse and sit at an appropriate height that allows your arm to lie comfortably straight and your wrist to lie flat rather than bend backwards or forwards. Consider finding a different size mouse, as some cause the fingers to stretch out too much and some are small enough to force a pinching motion. Special mouse pads with gel or soft foam wrist rests can also be purchased and can help the wrist lie flat. Neck And Shoulder Since starting your job at the office, have you noticed any changes in your neck and shoulders? Mom always told you to watch your posture and she was right. The way you sit can have a huge effect on your body. By sitting constantly in an awkward position, you put undue strain on your muscles, causing “static effort.” You know that stiff feeling in your neck and that pain in your shoulder blades? That is most likely due to an improperly arranged desk. If your chair is set too high for your desk or your keyboard rests too high or too low for your arms to rest in a neutral position, you will be either hunched over or reaching up, and your muscles will remain in an unnatural and uncomfortable position. When this is held long enough and repeated often enough, repetitive stress injury can occur. Your chair or desk, if not both, should be adjustable. Make sure to adjust yourself to a height where your arms are in a neutral position when typing. More importantly for your neck, stop cradling that phone! We have a tendency to try to do as much at one time as possible and, subsequently, we sacrifice our own health and comfort. If you need to type, flip through papers or write while you are on the phone, get a headset. You could also benefit from a headset if being on the phone is a large part of your job. When you cradle the phone between your ear and shoulder, you may not feel it right away, but you are subjecting your poor neck muscles to a lot of unnecessary pain. |
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