Categories
Career RSI

Lunch breaks are not for wimps!

I found this article on the BBC News Magazine web page which got me all fired up just by it’s title “Are lunch breaks really for wimps?“. The article points to research which paints a truly scary picture of current work practices. The following are some quotes –

“Only one in six workers takes a regular lunch break.”

“One consequence of the credit crunch is that breaks are getting even shorter as job insecurity increases.”

“Employees are struggling to keep on top of to-do lists and think the answer is to work harder, eating a sandwich at their desk as opposed to taking a full lunch break, and also not having sufficient breaks during the rest of the day.”

“The vast majority of people are having lunch at their desk while working. That’s the average person now. Very rarely do they get out of the office.”

“If senior management create a culture that lunch is for wimps, it’s counter productive. We all need breaks.”

The research quoted in this article, if valid, foretells a very bleak scenario for

Categories
Ergonomics RSI

My own RSI pain experience

My own experience with RSI pain is that it sets in fairly quickly (over a period of 6 months to 1 year) from the start with mild tingling over the right and left hands/forefingers to more full-blown pain. I had been working extensively doing Computer Aided Design work and producing large quantities of documentation. In the image below, the red areas indicate the main areas where I experienced most of my RSI pain.

rsi arm pain

The areas of pain included –

  • Acute pain over right index and middle fingers
  • Pain over backs of hands
  • Acute pain right wrist
  • Acute pain over outer edge of right thumb
  • Right upper forearm extensor pain
  • Finger joint pain when typing
  • Similar story with left arm (less intense, but I am right handed)

Each separate area of pain could be attributable to a certain cause, and sometimes one symptom would