Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
I have just wrapped up my 3rd year as a kinesiology student with shooting pain radiating from my wrists up to my shoulders. By self-assessment, I believe that I was experiencing carpal tunnel-like symptoms. The carpal tunnel protects the median nerve, which innervates the hand, thumb, and fingers. Carpal tunnel? symptoms include radiating and shooting pain from your shoulders down to your fingertips, weakness in the affected hand or wrist, and numbness.
Being a student, I have hunched over my laptop for countless hours at a time, studying or typing up assignments. As a result of trying to eradicate this pain and prevent future issues, I have now become highly interested in ergonomically assessing all of my work places, and it has helped immensely.
Why should you care? Well, we are all sitting in front of a computer, laptop, or work station for longer and longer periods, and honestly you don?t realize the effects it has on your body until it tells you through pain and discomfort. Why not prevent the problem before it even has a chance to cause discomfort? Being a curious Kinesiology major I began to investigate my problems and found some things that can hopefully help you as well.
Core 77 put out a good article comparing good and bad posture when using a laptop. ?Since laptops are compact, it is almost impossible to maintain correct ergonomics as you use them, the screen and keyboard are too close together to enable proper posture. Below are what bad and good ergonomics look like in general, but the latter is improved by the help of a lowered keyboard and a raised laptop.
Bad and Good Working Posture
From what I learned, the way to avoid wrist pain is to maintain a 90 degree angle with your forearms and your keyboard or mouse. There are plenty of resources that show you ergonomically correct keyboard use, but here it is in a nutshell:
The Right Way to Keyboard
Even a small deviation from the norm (correct ergonomic hand and wrist position) can cause pain. Imagine typing a 5000 word essay. Each time you type a letter, a force is generated and transferred through your fingers, to your wrists, and all the way up to your shoulders. Although these forces are small, they eventually add up and can cause discomfort if you are using awkward typing methods. Honestly, I never really thought of correcting my typing mechanics as well as my hand and wrist posture until I experienced the extreme discomfort of typing incorrectly. Making this change was not easy, as I had developed many bad habits while I typed. I had to constantly remind myself to check my posture and if I was following the correct typing posture. Although it seems like it would be a difficult adjustment, the benefits of not experiencing shooting pain radiating up to my shoulders are well worth it.
Ergonomically correct backpack
After inspection, I also realized that my backpack had been contributing to my shoulder pain. Being a student, I sometimes have to lug around multiple textbooks.? I soon began to see that I was carrying a lot of weight on my back for long periods at a time, which would lead me to having sore shoulders at the end of a long school day. Of course, me being the curious Kinesiology student, I looked into it. The way my backpack was set up, the weight all went down to the bottom of the bag, causing me to roll my shoulders forward and walk around with a rounded back to offset the weight. This caused me to have to bear all of the weight of the backpack on my shoulders, thus leading to sore shoulders at the end of the day.
Looking online, I stumbled upon a company called Airpacks who design ergonomic backpacks. Their backpacks are designed with cushioned straps and many other features that help in distributing weight throughout the bag.? The main selling point that got me, was that they included a small air bladder which rests on your lower back that helps maintain correct, upright posture. By doing this, not all of the weight of the bag is born by your shoulders, but instead transferred throughout your entire upper body and core.? In the picture, the Airpacks ergonomic backpack is on the left, and a regular backpack is on the right.
Amar with his ergonomic backpack
The difference for me was immediate, and I could visually see my posture change as I changed from my old backpack to my new one in the mirror, and as you can see in this picture of me and my new pack.
Ergonomics is very important and I learned that the hard way. Don?t be like me and wait until you experience discomfort to ergonomically assess your workplace. Be proactive and make sure you are not damaging your body at work or school, and prevent the irritation of your nerves and muscles.
Source: http://wellpepper.com/why-ergonomics-matter
the maldives harper lee mega millions numbers the fray seahawks new uniforms 2012 tornadoes in dallas anchorman 2
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.