Do you have painful hands? Repetitive stress over the years means that your hand and wrist joints have taken a beating. You are not alone if complaints of pain have become a personal mantra. If your hands are sore from repetitive stress injuries, you may be forced to reconsider the way you are doing things. My hands hurt, especially the thumbs, but I still feel a need to write. I find typing easier than trying to grip a pencil for any length of time, but even that has a unique set of problems.
The written word is still the most powerful form of communication. If you don’t communicate no one will know that you were here, so once again you are forced to adapt. Learning how to change the way you type is just as important now as it was when you were sitting at an “old fashioned” manual keyboard so many years ago. If painful hands and wrists are keeping you from expressing yourself in writing, it isn’t too late to alleviate some of those painful movements. Jennifer Davis gives us some tips in her article (Type Without Pain) written for Arthritis Today (July/August 2011). You don’t have to have a diagnosis of arthritis to benefit from the advice and encouragement shared in these publications.
The author cautions against trying to compensate with anything but tried and true methods. If you try to ease the pain on your own you may do more harm than good. Just repositioning your hand alignment or slowing down the process isn’t necessarily the answer, as your new “method” may put more stress on your joints than before. She stresses that your workstation may be a big part of the problem.
- First of all you need a comfortable adjustable chair. Your thighs should be parallel to the floor and feet flat on the floor (you shouldn’t be perched on the edge with knees crossed like I am doing right now).
- Secondly, an adjustable key board tray so that you can raise and lower the height and angle for your hands and wrists (something else that I will have to look into).
- Your keyboard should be positioned so that your elbows are bent and your forearms resting on your desk parallel to the floor.
- There are ergonomic options on the market, such split keyboards or a modified mouse that might work for you.
- The top edge of the monitor should be the same height as your eyes (if you wear bifocals your monitor needs to be positioned as low as you can get it).
- The author recommends not using a laptop as your primary computer (the low screen may put added stress on your neck and the keyboard alignment is not adjustable.
If your hand woes are from constant keyboarding and your livelihood depends on your hands, you will want to see a specialist for more aggressive solutions.
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