Ask HN: How many of you are suffering from RSI or similar?

I started having issues a few months ago when I moved desks at work to one which was not as ergonomically well adjusted as my previous desk. I was surprised how quickly my wrists began to hurt.

After doing a bit of research, and going back to my old desk, things have gotten much better.

The changes I made are 1) don't wrest your wrists on the desk when typing. Apparently we're supposed to have our wrists raised...who knew?

2) I use more keyboard shortcuts. I've taken to using virtual desktops in windows to switch between screens rather than mouse between windows. Works great.

3) reduce mousing activity when you can (learn keyboard shortcuts if you haven't. When you do mouse, don't use your wrist. I used to place my wrist on the desk and my fingers on the mouse. Now I place my palm on the mouse. This causes you to use your arm to mouse around and is less stressful on your wrist.

That's what I've tried so far. Still not 100%, but definitely getting better.

I've dealt with RSI for many years and at one point it was so bad I could barely move my hands. Like others I had seen many different doctors, message therapist, acupuncture, etc... One of my doctors then suggested taking up Hot Yoga. I did this an it GREATLY helped me out. My RSI isn't totally gone, but its much more manageable, to the point that I don't normally notice it. Though, I will warn you that you don't see immediate results and when you see results will probably be determined on how bad your case is. I was in a really bad state so I ended up doing 5-6 sessions a week at first for 2-3 months. During this time though my issues greatly diminished.

I had terrible tendonitis in my hands 15 years ago, enough that I thought I'd have to stop coding.

I started doing push-ups and felt a lot better in 2 weeks. I haven't had it since.

SNRI antidepressants are often good for chronic pain, you might want to try Effexor.

I have found online support groups for chronic conditions are not productive because they tend to bring in people whose identities are centered around a disability. For instance, I was looking for help for knee pain and found a forum run by a guy who saw the best orthopedic surgeon in the U.S. and was told he had the most screwed up knees the surgeon had ever seen, he was so inspired that he wants to become an orthopedic surgeon when he grows up...

I get RSI in my wrists/hands from typing/coding. But three small changes to my desk set up keep it almost entirely at bay:

1 - Use a vertical mouse. I like Evoluent best but they are expensive. Anker is much cheaper but not quite vertical enough for my liking.

2 - Set up my keyboard so that it tilts -away- from me. Meaning the back (F-key side) is about 1-2cm lower than the front (space bar side).

3 - Type with my wrists/palms raised up a bit and -not- resting on the desk or keyboard.

All of these things help keep my wrists and hands in a straight line with my forearms which seems to be the key for me.

It doesn't hurt to occasionally do some wrist stretches too.

I started getting issues about a month ago. I was surprised when I first read that we are supposed to keep wrists above the keyboard. takes a bit of getting used to but I think that is key.

I used to get terrible RSI in my right-hand and right-forearm. At the time I was using a MBP at home and a desktop with keyboard + mouse at work.

I eventually narrowed down my RSI to mouse-wheel and track-pad use.

Since switching from MBP to ThinkPads with TrackPoints I've had zero issues. The TrackPoint contains two strain gauges, so you're not really doing a "dynamic" movement while scrolling around, rather you're just altering the applied force.

Just pretending to scroll a mouse wheel by doing the movement with my hand still hurts!

Ever looked into TMS? http://www.rsi.deas.harvard.edu/mb_what_is.html

I don't have RSI but had a brief RSI-scare after some intensive typing and came across it. Seems like it helped a lot of people. Including Etherpad's founder http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.htm...

I had major problems a couple of years ago, I switched desk to one that was standing/much higher in the down position and swapped out my mechanical keyboard for an Ergo 4000, it took a couple of months but the problems all went away.

I keep a tennis ball on my desk which is I squeeze when I'm reading or thinking and I've found that helps as well.

I have been suffering from RSI in both arms for a decade now. It started after coding 10+ hour days working at a game company. The pain ebbs and flows with usage, but the inflammation and tightness has never disappeared completely.

Over the years, I've met a number of people who also also suffer from RSI in various forms. Fortunately, the majority of people I talk to suffer for some period of time, but do eventually recover, and are able to continue on with their lives having to be carful to avoid future flareups. A handful though, including myself, seem to fall into the "for life" category.

I've tried everything you can think of to varying results:

  * 15+ doctors in various specialties
  * Physical therapy
  * Massage therapists
  * Chiropractors
  * Acupuncture
  * Most every ergonomic keyboard and pointing device on the market
  * Various desk/chair/keyboard tray ergonomic adjustments
  * Addressing TMS (See books by Dr. Sarno)
  * Taking a year off of work (multiple times)
  * NSAIDs

This is resulting in me spending a lot of time looking into other career potabilities, but I keep ending up back writing code to some extent.

Voice coding is literally the first thing that comes to everyone's mind when you tell them you have arm pain, but it's a dead end in my mind. I tried to follow in the footsteps of Tavis Rudd, but I just ended up with voice strain from talking too much. You might have better luck though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI

At one point in my life, I had an intern who knew how to code type for me. No voice rec system will ever be as good as a human who knows how to code... and even dictating this way was slow and frustrating, though at least my voice wasn't strained.

Someone else here mentioned TMS. A good friend of mine who was suffering for months with arm pain was greatly helped by looking into and addressing it. I recommend Dr Sarno's book "The Mindbody Prescription". Even though it wasn't a cure for me personally, I did find it helpful to mitigate some of the pain.

As far as creating a community goes, I've never found reading about others suffering to be any help or comfort. If anything I've found it better to not dwell on it and just move on with life.

OTOH, a resource that offered suggestions and opportunities on how to make the most of the capabilities that are still available might be nice. Knowing there's still a lot that one can accomplished, even if you can't code for 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week.

That might be imprudent to disclose from an account is easily linked to your real name, right?

You need to be very self-conscious about how much stress you're putting on various parts of your body. All your muscles should be as relaxed as possible throughout the day. Always seemed common sense to me.

Have you tried wrist strengthening exercises? These exercises from gmb work well for me: https://gmb.io/wrists/

I get RSI flare ups every so often. Just over a week ago most recently and read that stressful work just makes it worse.

Now I'm to be in the position that I was able to drop the stressful work. It's helped a lot.

That makes a lot of sense. Massive crunch time recently has caused an RSI flare up, that has settled down now that it's over.