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eps

It's all in your head. This is a must read for any stressed out programmer, founder, new parent -

http://aaroniba.net/articles/tmp/how-i-cured-my-rsi-pain.htm...

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To say "it's all in your head" to everyone suffering from RSI, anywhere, ever, is a dangerous overstatement.

RSI is a description of an injury, not a diagnosis. Problems causing RSI can include:

- Genuine tendonitis. - Carpal tunnel syndrome. - Many and various shoulder problems including thorassic output syndrome. - Neck posture problems often feeding into things like brachial plexus problems. - Posture problems elsewhere. - Muscle strength issues. - Tension Mytosis Syndrome (as referenced in your article).

I've read quite a lot about TMS. It's an interesting potential diagnosis and I'd certainly advise anyone suffering chronic pain to look into it - AS WELL AS other more conventional routes.

Even Dr Sarno, the author of "The Mind Body Prescription", as referenced in the article, advises that you only consider TMS as a cause after conventional medical problems have been ruled out.

Ignoring all physical causes in favour of a single psychosomatic diagnosis, with no evidence, is extremely unwise. Advising people to do so is extremely irresponsible.

Please, everyone reading these comments, read the above linked article.

If you have not read about the psychosomatic theories of RSI and are affected in any way by the disorder, you owe it to yourself to read this article before you spend the rest of your lives blithely following unproven advice about ergonomics.

There is very compelling scientific evidence that suggests that the accepted medical hypothesis connecting RSI, ergonomics, and typing is flat out wrong. Read the article and if it piques your curiosity, do what you do best as hackers and evaluate the evidence and decide for yourself.

unproven advice about ergonomics

What makes you say that such advice is unproven? I know many people, myself included, who had serious RSI problems. Everyone I know, including me, who addressed their ergonomics, and perhaps also did some physical therapy, has seen massive improvement.

I think his point is that there is no scientific evidence linking ergonomics to RSI. So it's possible that your belief that improved ergonomics improved your RSI is the placebo effect in action (which is remarkably powerful!).

"The National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine recently released their long-awaited report on Musculoskeletal Disorders and the Workplace. The report, requested by industry groups and conservative Republicans who opposed an OSHA ergonomics standard, finds that there is strong scientific evidence showing that exposure to ergonomic hazards in the workplace causes musculoskeletal disorders and that these injuries can be prevented. Prepared by some of the world's top scientific and medical experts in ergonomics, the report calls MSDs an important national problem and strongly supports the approach that OSHA took in its now-defunct Ergonomics Program Standard. This is the third comprehensive review of the scientific literature in the past four years that has come to the same conclusions. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) published a comprehensive review of the data on the relationship between MSDs and the workplace in 1997. The NAS also came to similar conclusion in an earlier report published in 1998. The NAS report puts to rest, once and for all, the claims by some industry groups and conservative Republicans that there is no scientific evidence that workplace exposures cause musculoskeletal disorders. It shows without question that an OSHA ergonomics standard is needed and justified."

If you ask me, any claims stating that there is no scientific evidence that ergonomics is linked to RSI are abuses of science of the kind put out by the cigarette industry. It is bad science by those who want to create FUD about the proper remedies. It is a cynical agenda by those who would rather treat employees as disposable, rather than spending a single penny to help their employees continue on with their means of feeding and sheltering themselves. And then the same such cynical people, after putting employees with such ailments out on the street want to tell them, "Just get a job!"

This is patently absurd. People who say such things could not be more wrong on this issue.

I have a number of very significant chronic ailments, and there are many putative treatments that I should have liked to work. Almost none of them every do. If the placebo affect were that strong on me, I'd be a much happier person.

Furthermore, it's a repeatable experiment: everyone I know who has switched to a Kinesis Contour keyboard has had their RSI problems massively helped. Sure, you can try to explain it away saying that it's all "placebo effect", but this doesn't address the issue that many of these people, including me, tried other things first to no avail.

I think this research on phantom limb pain covers offers some interesting insights into the brain and pain, I am not saying plenty of people do not have real symptoms or issues! http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/21/phantom_limb_pa/

I did try a cortisone injection, which helped temporarily, but soon afterwards the pain while typing resumed.

Never, Ever take cortisone injection. Their damage can be massive. It's very tempting to take these injections because their effects is like magic.

In my case understanding that the pro lem was in my head. Ade the pain go away by itself.

As someone who has suffered a bout of bilateral tendinitis and a bulged neck disk, let me blunt and say: bullshit.

Now, I'm not telling you that there are not forms of RSI that are some, weird, self-defeating psychological thing. And certainly a positive attitude may help with recovery. But do not run around telling people with real, physical issues that it's all in their head.

Unfortunately the opposite is a much, much bigger problem right now: people running around telling people with chronic pain that they must have physical issues that must be corrected, and that pain that is not caused by physical issues is somehow not "real".

There is a lot of science about this. Look up David Butler and Lorimer Moseley if you're interested.

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