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Comment by modeless | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit weird, but I started getting mild wrist pain from computer use in college, and I credit two things with reversing it. One was rock climbing which strengthened my forearms and wrists, and the other was developing a habit of cracking my wrist joints. I stopped rock climbing many years ago but I continue to crack my wrists to this day. The habit causes me to flex and stretch my wrists every so often while I'm working and I really think that has helped prevent the development of repetitive strain injuries from mouse and keyboard use.

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I feel like wrist pain can have many different causes. I'm a climber and programmer, and I had pretty bad wrist pain for a bit. Went to the physical therapist, and after poking around a bit, she was like "yeah idk if this is actually a wrist issue. I think it might be referred pain from a pinched nerve higher up". Told me to try and sit with better posture, and gave me some tendon glide exercises. Wrist pain went away in like a week or two.

I get wrist pain as soon as I use anything taller than Apple’s flat Magic Keyboard and touchpad. I’ve used this combo for like a decade now and never experience fatigue. Once, I bought a fancy mechanical keyboard and I returned it within a few weeks as it immediately caused me wrist pain.

You can scoff at low travel and membranes all you want, but less movement = less fatigue, so I think they’re amazing.

Never thought about the climbing angle, but I’ll chime in and say that after I started climbing I’ve definitely not experienced more fatigue.

Get a wrist rest to raise the hight of your wrist to match the keyboard, it does wonders.

Everyone’s anatomy is different: wrist rests give me significant wrist pain and stiffness in minutes. I either need my wrists a touch lower than the keyboard (I’m okay resting on the desk if the keyboard is thin) or I must hold them elevated without resting them at all (if the keyboard thicker) which always makes me feel like an old-fashioned typist :)

That's interesting! I'm curious to know: is there a bend in your wrist while typing (either with or without the wrist rest)? Also, are your arms parallel to the floor? Also also, do you rest your elbows on anything?

The typical position seems to be that my elbows are just off the edge of the table/desk, my forearms just distal to my elbows rest on the edge of the table, and my wrists and hands are suspended slightly to be able to move freely to type. My forearms and wrists like to be straight, and I use keyboards without extending their rear legs so that they're as flat as possible. There's a slight angle between the table/floor and my forearms, sloping up from the edge of the table to a point just above the keyboard.

Thanks for replying! The ergonomics recommend not resting your forearms on the edge of the table, but as you say, everybody's anatomy is different; if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

In case anyone else comes into this comment section looking for ideas: the thing that helped me the most was adding soft pads to my chair armrests - I found that resting my elbows on the hard surface of the default armrests resulted in forearm pain.

I think shoulder height and arm length relative to desk height must play an important role in this.

I went the opposite direction- mechanical keyboard, large trackball- and my pain cleared up. The lack of feedback of the flat keyboard was too maddening to get accustomed to for me.

My carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms or RSI basically went away once I started using a macbook as my primary computer. It definitely doesn't hurt when the trackpad is right below my thumbs.

Yeah, I also love this particular aspect of this keyboard.

I've had serious issues with my wrist in June (after decades of sitting in front of computer for most of the worktime), it hurt when bent or when using it for almost any load.

I tried painkiller cream (don't think it helped), wrist brace (pretty much impossible to use mouse with it), wrist exercises (bending/stretching arm) didn't help.

I switched from traditional mouse (HP 255 dual wireless) to my wife's Logitech Lift Vertical (she didn't use and bought based on my recommendation anyway, so replaced with my HP) and the pain/issues were gone in ~2 weeks, not sure if it was thanks to the vertical mouse or if it would gone by itself, but just to be safe I keep using vertical mouse. Later I went to preventive check with my kid to their pediatrician, amusingly noticed he is using exactly same mouse.

Btw. how do you crack your wrist (you mean sudden movement to left/right/up/down)? I crack finger joints, but would never think of cracking the wrist.

> Btw. how do you crack your wrist (you mean sudden movement to left/right/up/down)

Apply a bit of tension to your wrist by closing your fist and squeezing gently as if you were gripping something in your hand, then rotate your hand in a bit. Guaranteed pop for me if I haven't done it in a bit.

The motion follows the wrist's normal movement, which is different to how I crack my fingers- those need to be twisted perpendicular to the normal after curling slightly.

No sudden movement required at all.

I used to get wrist pain from using mouse and keyboard back 20 years ago. I did no exercises. No stretching, no rock climbing, no triathlons, it just slowly subsided and went away. Maybe I just became aware of positioning and strain to such an expert degree that I just instinctively do the correct moves.

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